The most common criticism I hear about Curie is...

in curation •  7 years ago  (edited)

Curie "just" gives authors a big upvote and then "abandons" them.

The inference is that it doesn't give them a community, work with them one on one to help them learn how to improve their posting, mentor them on the ins and outs of the blockchain, etc. The funny thing about that... let's poll the minnows here, shall we?

Hey minnows!

Is there a shortage of communities you can join here? Any shortages of Discord groups you can join that will help you learn to post better or teach you about the intricacies of Steem blockchain? Any shortage of communities on almost every conceivable posting subject out there?

Now... is there a shortage of huge accounts willing to give you a huge upvote without making you jump through hoops or pay for it? Is there a shortage of accounts with huge votes that are upvoting good content just because it is good content?

The answers to these questions are clear.

There are tons and tons of communities here and pretty much none of them give out $100+ upvotes to their members. DTube and Utopian.io are obvious exceptions, but are also obviously focused on very narrow ranges of posting (video content and open source contributions, respectively).

For just an average blogger or social media user who has read the advertisements that STINC continues to put out there, saying that this is a place where you can be paid for posting, the truth when they come here is that groups like Curie and OCD are the only realistic chance of getting a big upvote. This is the reality - and it is reflected in the staggering user churn rate of 120% experienced by Steem in Q1 of 2018 (see @paulag's post here). If that figure doesn't alarm you or give you pause as to the long term future of Steem, it should. It doesn't matter how many new users sign up, if more users are dropping off because of the frustrations of life on what is rapidly becoming a pay-to-play platform than are joining... it is bad news.

Now lets talk about value added to the platform.

How many people are talking to friends and family that are not on Steem platform yet about the awesome Discord community they joined? Versus how many people talk to friends and family about the USD $200+ upvote they received just for posting a song or artwork or story that they would have posted for free in the past on Facebook or a personal blog?

Every single large Curie upvote is an advertisement for Steem

An advertisement that reaches a large group of people who are not currently on Steem blockchain. This advertisement for Steem is delivered by a voice these people trust - by a friend or family member excitedly talking about the large (in some parts of the world, REALLY large) payout they just received on a post. I can practically guarantee you that every single person who has ever received a big Curie upvote has told their friends and family about it. I certainly wouldn't shut up about it when I got my first Curie.

This form of advertisement is by far the most effective way to get people to join the platform. STINC knows it, that is why they still use this line of attack in their advertisements when the reality of the platform has shifted so far away from rewarding quality content (hello bidbots!!!). But unlike STINC, which has done nothing to adjust the algorithm on the trending page to remove paid advertising (cough... posting boosted up by bid bots), and has done nothing to make delegating to vote sellers the most profitable way to use your stake, and which has chosen to only support apps and developers with its own stake, Curie has been actually going out and keeping the brain in Proof of Brain the entire time. Curie is actually supporting content creators.

What is more likely to get people to come here and stay here...

a community they can join or a huge upvote on their posting that they didn't have to pay for? The answer is so obvious that it blows my mind when I hear people questioning the value of Curie. Wake up people! You can find a community of friends and peers on Facebook or any other social media platform. You can't find a group like Curie that will give you a significant sum of real-world money for your posting there.

If you want to support Curie you can:

  • Follow the @curie blog for twice weekly Author Showcase posting and resteems of the very highest quality posting
  • Follow the @curie vote trail on SteemAuto to support the authors
  • Vote @curie for witness (100% of witness proceeds are used for Curie operations)
  • Consider delegating SP directly to @curie if you can afford it (remember to leave at least 50 SP in your own account so you have the bandwidth necessary to transact on Steem blockchain). If you would like to delegate to Curie you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.

This post began its life as a comment in response to this awesome post by @silentscreamer in support of Curie:
https://steemit.com/curie/@silentscreamer/why-curie-needs-to-be-your-choice-for-witness-my-thoughts


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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Hi Carlster!

Good post, way too many whiners here on Steem, real life is much harder than on this amazing blockchain, they should be super grateful for a $100 upvote .... what they want us to also wipe their ass after flushing for them? :P

Ok..Promise to not make this TL'DR, I think Curie is the light-house and hope for Steem. I believe the next step to help get Steemian more exposure along with the fat-love upvote is by partnering @Curie up with various grassroots Communities ..... via some form of curation exposure, Example.. curation collabs.... just like you're doing with @comedyopenmic / #comedyopenmic.

But hell, we can't forget....posters can't have everything handed to them on a silver platter, they gotta:

  • plug into a community (aka. learn to be a giver and a supporter)
  • find leaders and mentors to help them improve and market their skills and arts
  • stop whining and be more grateful (and practice that in words and deeds daily)

Will just end by saying Thanks Carl!...keep up the excellent work leading and helping Curie pioneer new grounds!

ps. Also Check This Out:

Even with a modest COM 41,000SP $10 upvote (#comedyopenmic tag averages $5 per post.... many post gets $15 to $115 due to Dtube, Curie, Dlive, and many passing whales and orca's swimming by the #comedyopenmic tag to show love and encouragement), now consider that anyone can make 8 original comedy entries in any format every single month. That's an average total upvote of $40 - $80/ per month, not too shabby for writers, content producers and video makers to earn consistently in upvotes just posting 2 times a week! Now throw a a @curie $15 - $90 upvote once a month, and Bang! At least $55 - $170/month...and that's just average upvotes not including prizes**, ....Now you got the best of both, income and organic followers ....ok I'm over simplifying, but hopefully some of you guys reading here get the point, learn to add satire and comedy into your posting repertoire and use the #comedyopenmic tag to enter to win SBD, Steem, and Glory Every Week......it's Great for you wallet, and it's Fantastic for Steem!

pss. pls ignore my grammar and spellos....promise to start fixing that up when #reply-curie is launched

**the top COM earnerers can get upvotes of $700-$1000 per month! (no joke...go ask @myndnow in his Dtube streak for 4 weeks running doing @comedyopenmic from Round 8 to Round 11!)

From what I believe , @curie was never supposed to ''walk you through'' the Steemit community , as networking , engaging and building a following is a work you have to do on your own. As my brother @meno calls it , curie has the ''cake effect'' , meaning they show you your ''big potential reward'' if you produce some awesome quality. I have my own ''curie'' success experiences here on Steemit and come on , getting a $100 - $50 - $25 payout is amazing , when did you get one cent by uploading to ''mainstream social media''?.

When I joined Steemit I was still in doubt on what to write about here ( tutorials in production, share my original music, audio ) and after uploading my first song ( which got curied ) it was the big motivator to start writing.. I had just made $100 on a song! That's insane by today's standards , I am a musician and producer in real life and the amount of investment you need to do to have some money return on music is just nuts... getting paid for just uploading a song is almost too good to be true.. even if it is just a couple Sbds..

I had some Curie's on my extended music tutorials and such , but one day , the ''support'' stopped , and I interpreted as it was my time to ''start walking on my own'' and went on to engage and build a network inside the platform , get to actually know people , create projects , etc...

Having said that I got Curied again last week.. after many months of not seeing them ... on another song! How sweet can that be? getting curied has that nice feeling of ''maybe I'm doing this thing just right'' :) .

Long story short, as @dj123 says it ''real life is harder'' , we put up with lots of more difficulties on our daily lifes to make a living , it is amazing to have some earnings through here by sharing our thoughts in our fields of interest. But still, you have to work your way through here ! So , create , engage and build and you will do just fine ! Cheers!

Damn skippy! I had my first small curie through #comedyopenmic yesterday and it really does invoke change! Carl, your badges of originality helped to keep me hooked on the platform and the curie vote actually consolidated my decision to completely scrap vote buying and "go clean" so to speak (I made a post about it here).

Curie has no obligation to follow up people they've helped; as if a large one time sum of money for content isn't enough!

Can anyone imagine what Steemit will be like if we just delete @curie from existence? From the very beginning of its creation? Has anyone seen any success story not related to Curie? If so, how many percent? 0.0001%?

The highest ecstacy i have experienced on steemit rests on Curie when they deemed this piece worthy. On that faithful Monday morning, I remember asking myself when did i resteem some whale's post. Yep, that's what Curie does, surprises you so much that you will walk into your own blog and start convincing yourself that it isn't yours.

Without Curie i wouldn't have gotten to know of the three best writers - @rachelrick @warpedpoetic and @iamthegray - from my homeland Nigeria. They are actually the three best i have seen on this platform and that is no fucking lie. Check them out.

That is the point. Exposure. The bonus of $100+ love is what it is. A bonus. Not a right or entitlement to be bestowed on a million accounts EVERYDAY. People should fcuking stop expecting high quality love to be jizzed on them by virtue of being on this platform.

In spite of the challenges they have been facing, i was shooked upon seeing Carlgnash extend his benevolence to #comedyopenmic

But that is what makes him and others running Curie awesome: they never stop supporting contents/projects that will add quality to Steemit. They don't just stop.

Effing cheers to them menh

Big ups!

I can't talk about @curie without a sigh. Let us forget the money for a moment. Let's turn away from the $100 upvote, so that our hearts can stop racing and our lips can get some wet on their cracked face. Let us look at what a curie upvote means to a writer.

Do you know what it means for a group of people to come to an agreement about your skill and say that you are good at what you do? Do you have any idea of how much boost that gives to one's self confidence?

Today when I chat on discord and people are like hey warpedpoetic! Hey man, can you give me some tips? Can you check out my blog? It is because @curie gave me a platform to sit on. They told the world of steemit that this young Nigerian knows how to manipulate words and imagination, and the steemit universe believed it and accepted it as true.

My reputation, my popularity, as much of it that exists in reality plus the supposed popularity existing in my mind, is based mostly on @curie's role in my steemit life.

The @curie team and the curators of the project have been the reason behind why there are writers and other content creators who believe in their abilities and are churning out innovative and superb content on the platform. Because those who have experienced a curie upvote feel a sense of respect for their art, they will continue to aspire to surpass their previous efforts and such a manner great works are born. I can get behind that.


If I add the monetary value to all these, then @curie can be considered to be the largest reason for continuity and quality on the steemit platform.


I recently joined @comedyopenmic/ #comedyopenmic and the reception has been great. To find that @curie supports the project means a lot to me. For me, it shows a willingness to support the beautiful aspects of steem, the fun parts, the enriching parts of steem.

I don't think, steemit cannot do without @curie now. It is in most cases, besides OCD, @comedyopenmic now too, the only hope of the redfish who does not want to bid butts. I really do not know what is special about the particular butts, that everyone seem to be bidding on them ferociously?

I support @curie. I support @comedyopenmic. I support @ocd. Yes I said it.

Thank you!

I agree on organic growth. Comedy is one of the most powerful weapons of promotion. Remuneration is a plus, we must learn to be in steemit for the content, for the enjoyment. That is the vision we must share.
Curie makes it fantastic and I believe that those votes really help to promote the platform, but once again, we should look for people to stay in steemit so they can enjoy their stay, just like they do in other social networks. Remuneration can be a first hook but not the essential one.

I could be wrong but if I remember correctly, @curie was my first witness vote, and I really can't imagine ever changing my mind on that one.

I think Curie is the light-house and hope for Steem.

I couldn't agree more. As excited as I was for Steemit as a whole during my first month or so, if not for the @curie vote I got, I probably would not still be here today.

Like @carlgnash said;

This is the reality - and it is reflected in the staggering user churn rate of 120% experienced by Steem in Q1 of 2018 (see @paulag's post here). If that figure doesn't alarm you or give you pause as to the long term future of Steem, it should. It doesn't matter how many new users sign up, if more users are dropping off because of the frustrations of life on what is rapidly becoming a pay-to-play platform than are joining... it is bad news.

I would have certainly been one of those. The pay-to-play nature of Steemit today it very troubling to many people like myself. If not for @curie and @ocd type organizations there would be little hope for those of us who are just starting out.

@carlgnasher please forgive those of us whom, time to time may "critic" the inner working of @curie. The truth is the vast majority of us are very fond of her work, and feel that making suggestions could make her even greater. I'm sure that this is not always correct or feasible, but we do it out of love.

You're right @dj123

You are very right @dj123, i have seen curie pushing content with tag #comedyopenmic,
I chose @curie as a witness on your advice,
Thanks to @dj123, #comedyopenmic and @curie, you guys have helped me grow in steemit.

Ok!!!. @dj123 todo lo que escribes es una obra maestra... ahora bien, en todo el tiempo que tengo en Steemit (poco tiempo) he sentido que mi contenido tiene valor. Ok, varios amigos han comentado que dejemos las recompensas a un lado, pero es imposible dejar de lado todas las recompensas que hemos recibido de parte de #comedyopenmic . Y mejor aún las recompensas crecen cada semana... desde que estoy en Steemit borré de mi memoria a facebook! ¿Quien es facebook? ... en ningún otro serás recompensado por expresarte e increíblemente mientras más alocadas son mis publicaciones mejor se pone la cosa... ... Admiro el trabajo realizado por @curie .. que hariamos sin ti!!!!!!??????? ... ... #comedyopenmic y @curie es la combinacion ganadora.!!! .. y el trampolín al Éxito para nosotros los comediantes!

I was at first kinda pissed about @curie when i was looking into their vote trail and then I made a post about it and @carlgnash came in and discussed what was going on and looked into it further and ended up ending an entire curation trail that was abusing the @curie vote. At that point I went from pissed to impressed. @curie does great things for the steem block chain but people have to realize if you get a $100 upvote you can not expect for that account to follow you around and wipe your ass for you for the rest of your life. Do something with it, power up, reinvest it in wise and profitable bot votes ( I still hate bots but they are here to stay) , put bounties on your posts to attract followers. Do ANYTHING except whine like a little bitch. If you are here thinking that your only reason for living is getting a @curie vote, I got bad news for you son. I crank out content that makes people blow beer out their noses from laughter and guess what..... That shit ain't getting Curied but I keep on keeping on because people enjoy it and someone is willing to throw a fucking penny my way. I will build my mansion from pennies and laugh from the top. That is fine with me. I work my dick off for what i got and I sure as fuck wouldn't spit in @curie face after they dropped a hundred dollar bill at my feet.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

When I first joined steemit it wasn't long before I heard about the infamous @curie. It was literally the only manual curation community with a heavy upvote that I heard the most about. It was nothing short of a goal to get a curie upvote and my first one came in January when I wrote about My first snowmobile adventure.

This came after I had used my first bidbot (I only used them for one post) and the feeling of being rewarded for my work was not there with the bidbots. The curie proof of brain system is exactly what brought me to steemit. Since then I've had multiple curie upvotes. It feels like I receive one every month as I have found my niche sharing #rockhound pictures of my agates. Two months ago my second curie upvote came and the feeling was just as good, if not better than the first. It let me know I'm doing something right. I even spent a bunch of money on a new Nikon so that I can take better pictures of my rocks. Good thing I did cause I got a third curie upvote because of it.

This is what Steemit is all about. It's not just about curating crypto and developer posts. It's about curating original content. Not through the illusion of bidbots though! Take it from me, persistence, hard work and dedication really pays off as my fourth curie upvote came through this morning and I couldn't have a bigger smile on my face. My day has been made!

I actually watched an article the other day go from nothing to something as I refreshed the page and they got a curie upvote. You can't find a community that will reward you with any amount of money on any other platform.

We all have plenty of channels to find information on becoming great bloggers. 100 well thought out posts with good content in 100 days alone shows great results. We don't have many communities like @curie and this is absolutely the #1 way of advertisement as every time I get a curie upvote I share it on facebook to let others know what they're missing out on.

Curie doesn't just curate content and pursues the proof-of-brain concept. Curie helps create and strengthen communities all over the steemit blockchain. While not all my steempower comes from curie, a large percentage does, and it's helped strengthen the #comedyopenmic community. The curie upvotes that our COM contestants have received only strengthened our community by encouraging more people to make entries.

This is what Steemit is meant to be.

I just love the organic exposure that it has given me. These rewards have allowed me to support the #comedyopenmic / @comedyopenmic community with voting power and judging the contest. So I have to say that curie doesn't just upvote and abandon the author. Take it from me, I've gotten 4 curie upvotes since mid january. These upvotes encourage us minnows to keep going and reach for whale status.

Keep up the great work @carlgnash because Steemit needs you and @curie. I've heard rumors that @curie was going away. I don't believe this to be true, but I do think @curie needs more support!

Anyone that bitches about curie is either lacking awareness or butt sore about not receiving a meaty upvote!
If you put a microscope to anything in this life you will find the fissures. But stepping back, widening the view and taking off the ego shades will show curie for what it is. The central nervous system of steemit sustainability. @curie reaches into all the dark spaces and feels around for substance. I do not believe any other witness currently can claim a greater over all effect on our steemosphere. But watch out... here comes @comedyopenmic / #comedyopenmic nipping at the heels...😜. Haha, but really I’m in 💯agreement with @dj123 that @curie collabs with other kick ass discord groups is where it’s at! Finding those grass roots groups that fill the gaps of this most common criticism you bring up Carl, gives @curie a finger 👉 for pointing folks where they can find the help they seek. As I agree that this shouldn’t be the mission of @curie to train for posting or teaching Blockchain dynamics.
So thanks for sharing you clarity Carl... may @curie continue finding support for its vital proof of brain mission and may it continue linking and weaving with the communities that are engaged at the front line of steemit sustainability!!

Curie has been very supportive to dtubedaily family and I'm so grateful for that. I want to say thank you and god bless you, really! You have changed dtubedaily members mood and encouraged them to post more content. You are telling them that "hey! Your content is being watched! And you are great". Thank you 1000 times.

Now, obviously when you collab with another bigger group that would be fabulous! You have been contributed a lot to steem! But in a team, we are stronger.

Obviously, everything is up to you and you have done a lot already <3 but on the grand scheme of things, perhaps it might be beneficial for all of us :)

Winny out...for now ;)

I remember when I first heard of @curie. I had just started hanging out with the #newbieresteemday folks and I got a curie upvote for about $50 I think. There were like 200 votes and I didn't understand until @beeyou explained it to me.

I spunked a little. Don't worry, I had some tissue ready.

I can't say that it was what kept me here, because I had just met so many great people in Newbie Resteem Day, but it gave me some hope and validation.

That can go a very long way with me. It has made me want to find others that deserve some encouragement and to stay around here to make Steemit a better place. People can fight about bid bots and whatever else, but I decided to try and fight for something I believe in, which is good content.

That's why I landed and stuck with COM. I see people trying to make it better. Not everyone has the same sense of humour, and nobody is trying to force their version of comedy on others, just trying to make people laugh for all the right reasons.

And hopefully getting a curie upvote to validate that they are not only funny but know how to install Grammarly in their browser as well.

Thanks, Carl, and the rest of your team of do-gooders.

You're right, @curie is an honor to have you here at steemit, precisely because we always agree with the points where we believe the community will grow, and of course, thanks to the support of blogs like yours. Thanks to him because he has driven excellent projects like comedy, and the tag of #comedyopenmic thanks for the support, You are great!

Hi Carl,

I support @curie as a witness because I have seen their support to newbies in our #newbieresteeemday community. Many of times we have newbies highlighted on the account that receives Curie support. Even if they are not newbies, I still send a great post off to Gene or Debbie to review for Curie support. Now I have a Curator look at a post directly in Discord.

I've seen many people received support. Some choose to stay for this very reason, but I have also seen others decide to leave, despite their big payout of $70+ and even $300+. I believe the retention rate is partly due to the relationships built on here and community support individuals receive. However, not everyone are community engagers and do become discouraged after one big upvote support because now their expectation is this kind of payout. They only have to look at Trending to see this is what Steemit should be paying them for their post. When they start seeing penny or small dollar amount payouts again, well, I think it can be discouraging.

With that being said, we all have to find our "tribe" and receive the community support there. Sometimes, it's not even one community, but a parade of them. I enjoy helping newbies with the #newbieresteemday community and I also enjoy hanging out with the folks at #comedyopenmic.

Curie does an awesome job supporting authors but people have to understand it can never be a one-man show here on Steemit. One really does need community support for long-term success.

I've had this argument so many times with people... I think people see Curie as the means to support them instead of an extra amazing special bonus thing to help kick start their Steemy careers.

I think, honestly, if you're only here to make blogging your full time job, you might need to re-evaluate your expectations... but, compared to your own website or blog, the infrastructure and marketing is already done for you.

I value curie, as a massive upvote, it’s exciting. I did run off and tell people outside the platform on my first. I’m not sure how much more advertising it does within the Steemit community. After the excitement spike, there is always a slow fizzle back to Earth when engagement in the form of readership follows and comments that isn’t forthcoming. I’ve always got the sense, no one else (other than those who genuinely care for you) is excited for you, so best just be quiet and glad you got something to keep you going. So to me, curie is a form of life support. To give me a reason to remain on this platform and feel there’s a point putting extra effort into the posts we submit. Although, it’s a good reminder that we never got anything from other platforms.

I don’t see curie as ever abandoning me. It’s my job to work on my profile, to network to meet new people to learn about the platform. This is where the community component comes in. I don’t blame curie for not getting more follows, upvotes or comments. I just see it as human nature. But I do see curie as deeply entrenched in the psyche of Steemit, and that people can become over-reliant on curie or be upset it’s not them. I worry about that for myself, the sense that as a newbie we don’t have any other means of gaining SP traction. I’m not sure how the problem can be solved to generate more real engagement. I’ve always found this hard, and it’s this and not missing out on curie’s blessing that will lead to me leaving the platform.

Yeah that is what I meant as far as advertising - the first big Curie upvote works as advertisement outside the Steem ecosystem. Which is really, of course, where advertisements for new users have to go. You don't advertise for new users within the existing user base. My main point with this post is that I hear a surprising number of people who do not see the value of what Curie is doing from a "adding value to the Steem blockchain" perspective. These same people get excited about Jerry Banfield advertising for Steem on youtube, or some developer attracting new users to the blockchain with an app.

My point is - Curie has been advertising the core concept of Steem the entire time and gets very little credit for it. The entire Steem blockchain is based around "proof of brain", and the entire Steemit, Inc. marketing plan is based around "You can get paid to post your content". Every large Curie vote that a newbie user gets, they go running around to friends and family outside of Steem and tell them about it. This is the most valuable form of advertising you can get! You can't buy an ad from youtube that comes from the mouth of a loved one and tells a personal experience of actually getting paid for posting content. The real shame of course is that the trend is going farther and farther away from upvoting content based on merit, and is going more and more toward upvoting content based on who paid the most for the upvote.

Ganging up to increase influence disadvantages everybody that doesnt join in.
@curie takes from everybody's vote and gives to their select few.
As someone that will never get a curie vote, they can jump in a lake.
They steal from my vote 'because they can'.
Forgive me if i dont join in your celebration.

Even if you don't personally get a Curie vote, you should be able to recognize the value. As you may (or may not) be aware, the vast majority of the value of a Curie vote doesn't come from the @curie account. It comes from a single large whale investor, @hendrikdegrote, who decided to use his invested SP stake to follow the Curie vote. Consider that most of the other large investors have instead delegated their stake to vote sellers, which absolutely steals from your vote, and then look at what the Curie vote follow means for the @hendrikdegrote account:

You can go ahead and tell yourself that Curie is giving to a select few but of course if you are open to seeing what is completely transparent and apparent on the blockchain, you will have to admit that is an objectively false opinion to hold.

Here is the outgoing vote diversity from the Curie account - be curious what you have to say about this in respect to your opinion that Curie gives to "its select few"?

For reference, here is your own outgoing vote diversity. Hmmmm.......

Looks like my diversity is 5.5% less than curie's and im one person.

be curious what you have to say about this in respect to your opinion that Curie gives to "its select few"?

@curie's select few are lined right out in their guidelines.
Dissent need not apply.
Controversy need not apply.
Free speech is out if you want a curie vote.

So, my question becomes, how much more diverse would the stake holders be if whales werent imprinting who gets rewards.
Its clear that only like minded folks are deserving of rewards in @curie's opinion.
Anyone with alternate views are just overwhelmed by the advantage having whale support gives them in the math.
My rewards are decreased by the multiple that your whale's sp brings to the table.

By picking winners, losers come into existence.
By using whale sp to leverage your control of the math you create even more losers.
You might not like that fact of the math, but its true, and no amount of denial and jusification will change it.
Ganging up for the purpose of gaining advantage in the reward pool is abuse.

As I said you are welcome to hold your opinion. You can say that it is a "select" group, but to call it a select "few" is objectively false. In the past two weeks the Curie vote reached nearly 1700 users, the vast majority of those newer / lesser rewarded authors, and objectively not some small group receiving upvotes. The decision to stay away from political posting is IMO a sound decision to protect the supported authors from flag retaliation, but you are of course welcome to dissent. Not arguing those points. Just seems beyond strange to say that Curie is in any way shape or form only supporting a small group of authors. It just isn't the case.

In the past two weeks the Curie vote reached nearly 1700 users,...

1700÷65k=.02615
2.6% of authors is rewarded with what percentage of the reward pool?
Wanna bet its more than 2.5%?

Just seems beyond strange to say that Curie is in any way shape or form only supporting a small group of authors. It just isn't the case.

Now, knowing that @curie reaches 2.6% of authors, while reducing the rewards of every vote that would otherwise get paid, do you wish to recharacterize your statement?
Clearly, the vaster majority is being ignored.

Actually Curie currently controls less than 2% of the reward pool, so that would be a bad bet for you :) Compare that to the top 5 bid bots who control almost 20%. Here is another way to look at it, although obviously it isn't going to make a difference as you have already made up your mind to believe something that is not true. This is the percent of all authors in given REP bands who have received a Curie upvote in their time on Steem. Still want to say that Curie is supporting a "select few"? By the time you get into the REP ranges that mean an account has been posting for a little while and is not a spam account, Curie has supported a huge chunk of the accounts.

You are right, carl, i have made my mind up about ganging up to increase rewards, msp is just as bad, if not worse.
Im not sure that you see my perspective on the matter.
The way i see it, and have from the beginning, is that i am excluded from getting a curie vote by design, they dont want to support my content, but they dont mind making the votes i do get smaller by concentrating sp on their endeavor.
Same as the msp.
If they were voting as individuals that would be one thing, but to advocate a group identity in the pursuit of greater rewards disadvantages everybody that doesnt get their votes, including the dupes that join but dont get votes, either.

Your graph clearly demonstrates that the vast majority of authors dont benefit from curie's gang.
Yet, all rewards are diminished by their consolidating influence.
How many more authors would benefit if, instead of following the group, those voters found their own content to vote rather than that championed by curie?

What your graph shows me is that curie is not as successful at forcing their idea of good content on the rest of us as they would like.
Im proudly part of the 45% that got to rep 65 without being a milquetoast suck up.
Those with enough sp to control who does, and doesnt, get rewards here have been real clear about their goals on what content they want to be seen, thank god they are failing to silence all disenting opinions.

To further clarify my position, i am a fan of the whale experiment, i think the largest accounts should be viewed as speculators, and excluded from the pool until the pool grows large enough to accomodate them.
Doing this gives the little accounts a chance to grow without whales sucking all the rewards to themselves.

No, I see your point - I was just taking exception to the particular verbiage of select "few". I don't think by any definition of the word "few" it is accurate. BTW thanks for taking the time to respond intelligently, articulately, and without devolving into name calling/insulting. I personally am not in favor of silencing dissenting opinions, it is why I gave your initial comment my 100% upvote (not that my upvote is huge or anything) and raised its visibility in the comment thread. I would much rather have a conversation and try to understand opposing viewpoints, and I appreciate that you were willing to indulge me in that.

I am 100% in favor of what you are saying about whales being excluded from the pool. You may not be aware, but the initial goal of Curie was to have phased itself out of existence by now. The idea was to help diversify the reward pool, redistribute wealth (SP) to smaller accounts, and once Curie was not as relevant to shutter operations. The funny thing is that while Curie's influence on the reward pool has indeed been steadily shrinking, it is not because the wealth is better distributed now than it used to be. Quite the opposite. The rise of bid bots / vote selling is serving to further concentrate the wealth in the pockets of the largest accounts, dominating an ever increasing % of the vote pool, and in my own opinion, making Curie more indispensable than ever.

One thing I should mention - I know you have been on platform for a while, and typically when I run into people who share this view of Curie they have been on platform for a while. I bring this up because your point about the Curie vote being designed to exclude you (and by extension, other authors who share similar views) by intention used to have a much more solid basis in fact. Not sure if you are aware, but back in September of last year Curie diversified operations considerably by reserving a large chunk of its total vote power to support interest and regional specific "sub-communities", which do NOT operate by the core Curie guidelines. The reason there is such vote diversity as I highlighted in the first charts I shared, and the reason why Curie is now reaching a greater % of authors than its % influence on the reward pool, is precisely because of this. "Core" Curie operations, meaning the posts submitted by Curie curators for review by Curie reviewers, and which the Curie guidelines apply to, are actually now a very small % of the total outgoing vote. Each week the number of outgoing votes from this core operation is typically in the 100-150 vote range, while total outgoing votes is in the 1000-1200 range.

I am not going to pretend that there are no issues with the Curie supported sub-communities either, but the entire point of going this route was so Curie would reach a much more diverse set of authors that would never be reached by core Curie operations. We are in the middle of conducting an audit on all the supported Curie sub-communities and have uncovered some abuse of the vote follow, so again, not going to claim this is a perfect system. But given your core objections to Curie, hopefully you can see that this is a huge step in the direction you are wanting to see. These are much smaller votes, and are distributed much more broadly, and are not beholden to the Curie guidelines. The sub-community votes are cast by independent curation teams which are not Curie operators.

Anyway - thanks for humoring me and I appreciate the back and forth. You do good things for this platform and I appreciate it. Cheers - Carl

Thank you!

At least someone gets it :)

Content producers have a few choices: Produce for utopian, produce videos, produce content FTG likes, produce content V4V likes, or - produce whatever you like (outside of religion or politics I think?), do a good job and get a @curie vote.

Vote @curie as witness, show your love to solid content and delegate to @curie - support manual curation til the end!

Awesome feedback Ash!

Hey i came here from your other post. Left you a comment, i think you're onto something here, but just need to clarify how you want to make this work?

let me know:

https://steemit.com/welcometosteemit/@abh12345/competition-welcometosteemit#@dj123/re-abh12345-competition-welcometosteemit-20180513t112353080z

Cheers!

Already replied, you got me at a good time :D

Daem you're fast!

Ok, replied to your reply already :D

Dear Carl,

I just decided to double my delegation to @curie because of this post. You guys and gals are awesome and - without a doubt - one of the main reasons why minnows like me are still here.

If it weren't for initiatives like/ the people behind curie, I would just collect the contact details of the peepz that I like enough on here to stay in touch with in real life and go meet them in real life.

@curie gave me the strength to leave The Netherlands and go to Portugal armed with a backpack and my laptop. It made it possible for me to keep going without a dayjob and gave me the faith that blogging can actually make a living.

Keep up the great work my friend :>)

<3 Vincent

Aw thanks Vincent this is really sweet to read. Love you man :)

<3

I think the Steemit developers and the community their system creates is the unfortunate problem here- much as I appreciate what Curie is doing, as you've said, it's unreasonable to assume that Curie will upvote more than one of your posts, especially on a regular basis, even though I've gotten quite lucky with Curie itself. And since Curie don't share their decision making process, it's difficult for an outsider to 'cater' their content to Curie's tastes in order to earn a sustainable income (which is likely why that decision making process isn't shared)

The big issue for me is that I don't get a lot of people engaging with my work after a Curie upvote, I might have a post that's at the top of the trending page but there's very little indication that any of the users who regularly read content from that tag, or even the curators themselves, actually read the content. I see the money as a bonus to the idea of Curie being a way to promote undervalued authors, so that those authors can earn followers who will actually regularly read their work. Of my 92 followers I'd say less than 10 of them are actually regular readers. And while I can try reaching out myself, Steemit's upvote bots make it very difficult to find worthwhile content that I can comment on which is relevant to the most used tags I attach to my content, both because of how much crap reaches the top and how much of that crap there is.

New users who join Steemit because I got excited about my upvote mostly do so just to support me, their friend or family member, and then because they don't much care for Steemit they may forget they signed up because of the long sign up process, or they'll lose their password because they're not used to platforms that don't have password recovery functions. That's on them of course, but it still puts people off despite how absurd that seems to an experienced user.

And if readers don't provide feedback, then there's no way of telling what kind of content you should be posting to promote regular engagement with your work. I simply don't feel we have enough actually good content creators or commenters on this platform yet, and even intelligent people might look at Steemit and think of it as a ponzi scheme or a whale farm.

I think these are all issues that the Steemit developers themselves have to solve. We can't tell a community to not abuse a system that is so readily ripe for abuse. Where there's a hole, water will flow through it.

Curie desperately needs to succeed in its mission statement to get the wider Steemit audience to notice- to me, I think Curie needs a way to make it abundantly obvious that their upvote is different from a whale or bot upvote. When I received my first curie vote, I assumed a whale or a malicious cartel had upvoted me. It wasn't until I enquired further that I learned more. When looking at a Curie upvoted post on the trending page, there's also no way to distinguish between a Curie vote and a whale vote, so people might instinctively avoid a Curie upvoted post on principle, assuming the post is garbage.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks for the well thought out comment! First, let me start at the end :) I 100% agree that Curie could and should do a better job of the most basic part of explaining its mission - making it transparent what, in fact, just happened when a post gets the big upvote! The Curie voting stakeholders have already voted to make an automated comment, very short and sweet, without shilling or selling anything, to explain that the post was found through human curation and upvoted after human review as exceptional content (and referring to the Discord channel and our whitepaper to learn more). So, that is in the works.

The lack of engagement and feedback that you are mentioning in the first portions are definite problems with Steem - and this is the problem that all of the communities which I mentioned in my post have sprung up to solve. You pretty much have to engage in an off-blockchain community (usually based on Discord but I guess some people must still use steem.chat LOL) to actually generate real interaction on your posting. Unless you have a large sum of money to invest in which case people will be more than happy to be your friend ;) So, in my post above, I did not mean to imply that the communities here do not have value. They do. My advice to you if you want to stick it out here and actually generate real interaction on your posting, is you are going to have to find and join one of the many communities here. That could be one of the writing communities (writers block / isle of write), MSP, or whatever. It takes a time commitment and a willingness to hang out in a chat server. If you make that commitment, a Discord community will absolutely read your posting and offer you feedback and fill in these cracks that are actually gaping crevasses if you only stay on the blockchain proper.

I'm glad to hear Curie is working to actively improve their system. I shouldn't really be surprised, but it's a good thing to hear from one of their key members regardless!

I must admit, despite being a frequent discord user, I feel pretty overwhelmed when stepping into one of the larger servers. I think you're definitely right, though, that right now joining a separate community is the best way to go about things. I'd be interested in taking a look at Curie's server sometime.

I had a nice @curie vote once, and though I'd sure love if all my posts got that attention it's not just a one and done thing. Not only was I more motivated, my Rep score went up about 10 points and I was able to increase my SP about 30%.
That reminds me, I'm overdue to go write a post.

Get that post out! And thanks for this comment, it very succinctly mentions several points that I left out in my post for brevity's sake. I was focusing more on the big picture value that Curie adds to the Steem blockchain as a whole, by keeping some measure of truth in the Proof of Brain slogan and through organic advertising. But you are absolutely correct - for the individual author who receives a big upvote, this means that you can power up enough Steem Power to actually transact on the blockchain when the bandwidth is restricted because of heavy use, and it is a huge boost to REP. Cheers

Ive been discussing the current issues a lot with plenty of people. Stake based voting aside, the biggest problem i see now is the following.

Quality does enter the platform and Curie and OCD pick it up more often then not. But these two projects arent there to lead you along by the hand all the way. Theyr here to lift you up, get you on your way, provide an opportunity to improve what you do.
Ive seen numerous times how creators drastically improved their content after that one big curie. Everything after lifted the effort of the creator going forward and value created for the platform.
Curie did its job. After that its up to the community and the hard work of the creator to continue raising his payouts. I felt that on my skin as well.
Curie has a very specific and incredibly important spot in the ecosystem.
Whats happening after is the crap part.

The lack of quality/reward correlation, bot abuse, self voting, upvote circles. Etc.
I would wager that Curie and OCD are the most effective projects on the steem blockchain in what they do and in the value they bring.

They keep quality here. Whats happening after doesnt work well. You have that "equality for all" and "me first" way of thinking that is hurting the rise in value of the steem platforms.
Steem isnt creating creators that it can showcase to the world and say: "look! this is our guy here, he made it here".
Due to the same rewards for everyone from those that can give out rewards and due to those that care only about themselves. This creates the idea in minds of those looking from outside that steem is a place for spam and junk content which simply isnt true.
But some platforms even incentivize spam and conveyor belt content.

Curie does what it needs to. Its on the community to work on what comes after. If it wants whats best for everyone or whats best for their individual self.

The thing that convinced me to stay on Steemit was the massive upvote chain I got from Curie during my first week here. It really pushed me to consider making more new content, rather than simply using social media simply for news updates.

And I am glad you are here publishing awesome RPG content! That is actually right in my own personal bailiwick as a LONG time dungeon master ;)

Nice commentary Carl. I just got another Curie upvote today, my 4th or 5th such from @Curie. I have also been rewarded nicely by OCD so I don't have anything to complain about. Thanks.

I've had a couple of posts 'curied' and I've had a couple of posts "OCDed'. I've also watched the smaller trail hit twice (via GINAbot). I'm sorry to hear that things have been scaling back just to keep up with authors and their content. Good that there's more good content to cover, bad that there hasn't been enough to cover it and that curator payout is considerably lower than when you started.

re: social aspects vs. curie payout

I wouldn't just stay here for the social aspects (I'm not that social, but as you say, there's plenty of other social media to do it on). However, I wouldn't just stay for the opportunity of a curie or OCD vote, either.

So, somewhere in between I've been finding my way, while gathering enough of a following who regularly upvote to push things forward until I manage to come up with the next post that will get 'curied' or increase the upvote. It sounds to me like you all have enough going on without trying to do more. It's better to do one thing really well than divide already stretched time over two different tasks.

I appreciate all that you and the Curie folks do. I appreciate the OCD folks and any others who have started to build some curation trails. I think as long as there is a human curator involved and standards to work with, it is far superior to bidbots.

So, I guess those who would say they're not getting enough from Curie need to figure out if there's more they can do for Curie. Delegate, upvote posts, pass up the bidbots, etc. It's tough when you're in the lower SP and just trying to function, but giving up on the manual curation process is the last thing that needs to happen on this platform.

Amen! Very well said brother. And I do not mean to imply by any means that there is no value in the communities here - this was more meant to address the common complaint that because Curie does not provide a community, it has no value. That, I beg to differ with. I think there are many awesome communities here. It is the unfortunate reality that there are not enough large stakeholders taking the long term vision and rewarding deserving posters.

No worries on my account. In reality, Curie helps across a lot of the communities here and doesn't need to create 'one of its own.' At least not beyond the community or bond I'm sure all of you who are somehow associated with Curie already feel or share. :)

I don't know...maybe I've got one toe dipped in the waters of the other camp. When I was new I got a @curie upvote on an opinion piece I wrote, and although it was surprising and I appreciated it, the upvote was around $10, which isn't a lot compared to some upvotes they give, and I haven't been touched by @curie since, so needless to say I didn't tell my mother about it. You get a taste of the success you could have, and usually nothing more. Then you hope they come back every time you put your blood, sweat, and tears into your post, but they have already abandoned you, moving onto fresh material...

Sure, I get that angle. That wasn't a "big" Curie vote, it was one of the sub-communities supported by Curie with a vote follow, or one of the "direct follow" curators who can give out small votes. Not that a $10 vote is still anything to sneeze at, but a lot of what I said above was referring specifically to the Curie curator/reviewer operations that give out the large votes. But that bit you said... "Then you hope they come back every time you put your blood, sweat, and tears into your post..." - of course I can see why it would be frustrating to not get that big reward every time, but you are basically saying that even the small upvote made you put extra effort into posting and gave you that idea in the back of your head that another big upvote was possible, no? Compare that with... never getting any big upvote at all. For every person who gets frustrated at not receiving a repeat Curie, how many people get frustrated at NEVER receiving any significant upvote at all? I can tell you from the inside perspective, Curie would absolutely love to be able to give out more upvotes, reach more people, reward people more than once. What is actually happening is Curie has been forced to scale back the number of votes because an ever increasing amount of the total reward pool is dominated by vote sellers. Curie has had to ratchet up the average vote % and decrease the total number of votes going out. Curie operates such that the average payout from a "big" Curie vote has to be high enough that the author gets twice as much as the curator who found the post, and the reviewer who reviewed/approved it. To keep that in place in the 6 months that I have been with Curie, the finders fee and reviewers fee are now 30% what they were when I started, and the average vote % going to the author is almost double what it was. These trends are only accelerating currently - if the community at large quit supporting vote sellers and started supporting curation projects like Curie, we could reach a lot more people.

I believe @curie can be a life changing thing for people. I joined Steemit 11 months ago, but I only posted a few of my artworks back then. After this I came back in december I believe. To be not really active, and interacting here yet. This changed in last january ..

I had been telling people on a Dutch platform about Steemit, and why they should join (after I found out I actually had some coins waiting for me that were more valuable than the last time I logged in lol).
So a few did, and one of them had been active for almost 3 months when I started posting again..

She gave me the golden tip, she knew where I should look to write in my niche (because I started writing to work towards a goal). So I left some comments, got pointed out to the tag I should use. The first post about being homeless got only maybe below 1 dollar (I am not totally sure but I believe it was below 1 )
The next day or so, I wrote part 2 of this story. Which got a curie vote AND another whale vote. This post reached the amount of 205 dollar at payout!

I didn't know back then that it was a curie vote, just found out recently that one of the big votes was from @hendrikdegrote back then I did not know curie yet.. Ever since I've been a member in the familyprotection community and this 1 first post that had success gave me a big motivation to continue!

My good friend @hetty-rowan is one of the supported members by curie, as you know ;) And I see the boost she gets when curie picked up her post, and she works damn hard to get to her goal too. So no, I don't believe Curie just gives 1 vote and that's it. Not in her case anyway :)

In my case I've had too big pending rewards I found out this week to get a curie .. So I got the boost I needed to get me started.. Thanks for that!

Thanks for this. I was in a similar boat to you when I got my first Curie, I had no idea that Curie was even behind it. But that one huge payout on a post was incredibly motivating. Really glad to hear that you have found a community to be a part of and are "making it" here, and also really glad to hear that Curie found you at the beginning and helped motivate you to stay :) Much love - Carl

It is incredibly motivating indeed! I got lucky Curie and Familyprotection found me at once.. I did not know what happened to me .. I was ecstatic actually. I am curious, how long have you been around here? And were you just as clueless on here as me when you got it? I had even no idea what discord was when I got it, so I just tried some tags, but did not connect that much with anybody yet. I am not going anywhere anymore, trust me. Steemit is my second home! <3 Thanks for your hard work - Anouk

Totally right in your assessment @carlgnash. I just received the ole @curie boost and I told everyone and my mother about it. It's true. I'm incredibly thankful for the support that @curie has provided both to my own and account and to others. Without curie, there are several posters that whose content I love but would never know about.

For an average blogger or social networking user who has read the ads that STINC continues to publish, saying that this is a place where they can be paid to publish, the truth is when they come here that groups like Curie and OCD are the only realistic chance of getting a big positive vote. This is the reality, and is reflected in the staggering 120% user dropout rate experienced by Steem in the first quarter of 2018.

Not everyone is clear on the goals of each community, not everyone wants to learn and then work on the growth of the account, we always seek success overnight, then they will want votes again and again without understanding many basic things and that is when frustration forces us to give up. There are communities that show love for the small fish, the education they give us, is also a way of giving love, particularly I have not received a vow of curie, but I always feed on everything they contribute to the ecosystem!
Sorry for my mistakes, I use a translator as I don't speak English

Yeah and to be clear I think there is a lot of value in communities. I see that Curie is filling a different role, and unfortunately it is a role that is becoming increasingly rare and valuable. Less and less of the voting stake on this platform is actually going to vote for good content and being cast by real people after reading posts. Communities are great. So is an organization like @curie that goes around giving people large upvotes just for creating awesome content! And the latter actually does more to advertise for Steem and prop up the very underpinnings of the system (proof of brain) than the former. There is a ton of value in curation groups and I hope the community at large comes together to support them. Cheers

Hell I was very happy with my Curie upvote, which gave me a payout I keep reinvesting. It happened once, so it's not like it changed my life, but it definitely gave me a confidence in this platform, that - let's face it - is often on the low end!

Yup, exactly. And Curie would love to reach more people and give out more upvotes, but Curie's total influence on the reward pool is dwindling daily as more and more of the entire sum of available voting power is delegated to vote sellers. Glad to hear you got a Curie! Keep up the awesome posting!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

My biggest obstacle on Steemit has been a parallel to a real life situation. I recently moved to a new town, started a retired lifestyle, and have done well at intergrating into a new community. I've found some generous, knowledgeable, and helpful friends over the past couple of months here on Steemit. However, I find it difficult to engage in casual conversation outside the influence of Steemit comments and replies to an interesting post. I know about Steem.chat and I've interacted with a few people there much to my satisfaction, but I only have one or two contacts. I hope to offer much more to the platform, but I have three major complaints:
1.). I find it difficult to engage friends without asking for some help or advice.
2.). Discord and Steem.chat are helpful, but how do I get friends without either being invited or asking for help (which was generously provided by friends despite the off-topic requests.)
3.). I would like to have a "reading list" or "favorites" button to organize my Steemit literature. Now I'm just bookmarking web pages.

Yeah these are common complaints, or problems/obstacles, whatever you want to call them. The simple truth is the user experience on Steemit.com is terrible. The website is lacking super basic functionality for a social media platform or a blogging platform, so whatever you want to use it for will pretty much be frustrating :( The Discord communities can be very helpful to bridge that gap - there are a lot of interest-specific as well as general Steem communities on Discord, and making friends there (which does require a time investment to hang out in a chat room) can help.

There really isn't any magic shortcut, if you don't want to hang out in a chat community it is very very difficult to build up an engaged follower base here. Btw have you tried out busy.org? It is one of the many alternatives to steemit.com, you use your same username and keys and it displays all the same content, but has many added features including a favorites feature. Good luck!

Thanks @carlgnash for your attention and effort. I must admit, it is my responsibility to absorb and understand all the resources available. Yet, just moments ago I gave up on trying to login to Steem.chat and Steemit.chat. Both were unresponsive. I can log on to Discord, but where to start other than my two generous friends who have better things to do than help newbies? These friends are valuable associates and I don't want to lose them!

Well I just took a quick look at your blog - looks like SteemSTEM is the obvious first step for you, have you joined their Discord server yet? If not here is an invite: https://discord.gg/RmQWeHt

See, here I go again asking for help...sorry.

I'll try busy.org...thanks!

Curie has huge value! And I say that from an objective perspective, because I’ve never received one, but I certainly see the value it has. Not only in promoting steem and good content, but in actual financial contribution. To some it’s a big upvote, to others it’s a few months of income. Haters gonna hate, y’all doing a marvellous job.

F691A8C2-1331-422E-A907-C903641A08BD.jpeg

I often listen about this but unfortunately this is not for photograper i am looking a best way where photographer give him engourage

Again upvoting your post.. :)

I think it is crazy that someone would expect continued support from Curie. When I got my first Curie vote, all that did was light a fire under me to make sure that my posts were going to be as professional as possible, and that I was doing everything I could to put out the best quality of posts that I could.

The good thing about Steemit is that you really have control of the reigns, so to speak, of your own future here. It really is all about finding the right communities to be a part of and once you find that community, do what you can to make that community better. Don't just be in the community to take advantage of being there. Get to know the people and really interact with them. This is a social network, and that is one thing I think people have really lost with the previous social media applications.

thank you I really like friend

Ha! I just posted about @Curie. I didn't see this was already on my feed. Now I feel redundant. :)

I got your point. In our trail discussion earlier I was enlighten by these things as well

Well said.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

That's right, I think one of the problems is that the common author who does not know much about Steem does not see the great advantages of having decentralized curation projects like Curie, that are normally focused on collective development more than the individual development or the development of a exclusive group of authors, it's hard to be curied more than once, but it's the best for the grow of the community.

I think that the solution to this problems is to bring out new ideas and projects which are specialized in a niche or segment of the market while we focus too in supporting projects like Curie and Cervantes which who are capable of attending a large amount of authors who create content on various topics.

yep you (meaning @curie) and @ocd glued me to the platform early on! thankful to this day for your efforts engaging and rewarding soooo many of us creating quality content!! steemit wouldn't be nearly what it is today without it. would love to see more initiatives like this!

Preach on, preacher. Over the roofs and everywhere. I'll resteem this one. This is such clear logic you presented in the commentary and it makes me wonder why it's still a mystery to some.

A really wonderful article, well published, my friend, I wish you all the best
You really are a successful and wonderful person

I really like good friends, cheerful steemit:

It happened to me twice in 3 months and I´m very thankful for that :)

You have my vote. Keep up the good work:)

Good post and yes there are issues with the upvotes on good content and for people like me who refuse to use bots out of old school honour code things look bleak, lol - but not hopeless. I had no idea what a Curie was when i got my first one SMH People where like congrats to your curie, the person who mentioned me was like I got you a curie all excited and I was like what on earth is he talking about lol -Radium? What does Marie have to do with me ... I know a little better now :)

I agree AND! As i have been saying. Its not sustainable for long term. As for friends??? Nowhere have i found friends like my steemit friends. My die hard feminists to wild out artists like YOU!

CURIE is amazing AND should stay. But it is not a bidbot alternative. We need much more people giving regular small votes. Guess what i used my curie money? Buying stuff from steemians and supporting women from sll over the world. I would LOVE for curie to grow their community accounts Because "hey i have a job that's sustainable!! Is much better than ! Hey i got an 80 dollar upvote when i made my stuff as apolitical as possible!! It will never happen again!! There is no V4V for people like me lol. Thank god i had curie to get me started. Now im using bidbots to create a more stable path for others like me. I ❤️ Curie but this conversation of curie vs bidbots is not helpful to me. Call for delegation sure but create a sustainable alternative before we put all our money in curie.

You know I love you but I honestly feel you don't see the bigger impact of vote selling. The part about "we need much more people giving regular small votes" is EXACTLY what vote selling is crippling. An ever increasing amount of the total vote power on platform is delegated to vote selling. It is going to hit 50% soon. Before the rise of vote selling, a huge chunk of available SP was just not voting, which meant that every small vote cast by a real human had a MUCH larger influence on the reward pool. The more of the total SP that goes to vote sellers, the less of an influence the small votes of real people have. That is a fact. There is no way around it. Big whales before, if they wanted to earn money from their SP, could either vote on other people's posting (earning curation rewards) or vote on their own posting (and run the risk of getting in flag wars with other big whales who disagree with self voting crap posting, see e.g. Haejin / Bernie). Now, big whales just delegate their SP to vote sellers and all that SP is used every day and the effect on small votes is HUGE. If you are advocating for an increase in people giving out smaller votes / more sustainability - you should be advocating against vote selling. The math is clear.

But my broader point wasn't to pit Curie against Bid Bots. It was addressing a specific and very common criticism, that Curie doesn't really add value to the platform by giving out big votes. To me, there is a very clear and pressing need for MORE large votes given out based on the merits of content and not on someone paying for it. People often point to @jerrybanfield paying for ads for Steem and say, at least he is adding value to the Steem blockchain. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, he does add more value to Steem than the vast majority of the other top witnesses, fully half of whom are directly involved in vote selling! But I honestly believe every big Curie upvote is ALSO an advertisement for Steem, outside of the blockchain, and a much more effective form of advertising at that. Did you tell friends when you got your first big Curie vote? I am willing to bet you did. I am willing to bet everyone who received a big curie, told people about it. This is advertising for Steem, and the most effective form as well - advertising coming from trusted sources.

To be very clear im making a list.

  1. I don't not like buying votes. I do not agree that its good for the platform. I said there is no other sustainable option that whales are willing to adhere to.

  2. Since October 2017 I have been a vote purist. I have resisted self voting, advocated for more unbiased curating similar to curie, argued/discussed/yelled about finding solutions with dolphins and witnesses galore. Guess what the bigest hinderAnce is? Freedom. Yep. Bidbots and flagging and whale spam are allowed because "freedom" and "liberty" .thats your real villain.

  3. As a reviewer and person who has made a full time career out of curie, love you! But you are biased. If Curie succeeds-- you succeed. You are tooooo far in the Curie rabbit hole to tell me that I dont see the bigger picture! My goal is to help women around the world gain a sustainable income while combatting inequality. If steemit is a success--- i can do that. However Curie isnt going to get us there. Its great!! For new people!! A great way to keep "new authors" who arent political or religious excited about steemit.

  4. It is not, however, a great advertising tool. I did tell people about my curie votes! And i felt do good and respectedand honored. But not one person came over from that. Why? Because I haven't made it sustainable able. Its just another flash in the pan. When I can live off steem earnings and still support my community-/ then i will truly be a steemambassador.

  5. Bidbots are helping me get there with gaurunteed money. I do my part by not posting crap.

🤷‍♀️

Ps ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

Curie isnt a bid bot alternative. No one ever said that. Curie has its place in the ecosystem and does its job amazingly well.
Curie is just the first step on your steem journey.

But the impact of bots is quite clear. You call bid bots sustainable income, what i call it is short term gain/long term implosion of the steem based plaforms.
Consider if all large chunks of SP are delegated to bots. Atm its close to 50% and then you have the SP held by steemit.inc and the devs.
What happens?

Almost everything is locked up in bot delegation, minnows have nowhere to get an upvote from since most whales delegated their SP, they cant pay for bots because they have no liquid SBD, they wont invest because its stupid to pay your own money just to get on a ever growing max buy-in top trending spot.
Outside investors wont come here because what they see at first glance is literal, "put it in a bag and throw it off a cliff", mediocre to garbage content.
What youre left with is dtube that upvotes literal spam with a curation system that doesnt have any kind of rule or reason behind it, except rewarding those that can make the most of the same in the shortest amount of time. And im talking 30-40 low effort videos per week.
Once Ned takes away their delegation what are you left with?

A dead platform with content that no one watches or reads with trash payed for made most visible.

Thats what bots lead to.
Sure they have some surface level use, but looking deeper and long term at it they are a cancer to the steem blockchain. A cancer in every meaning of the word that will slowly but surely kill steem.

I feel like I'm speaking spanish here. I disagree with your assumptions. However, if Curie had a sustainable solution then none of us would need to have this discussion. I will use bid bots to pay my people until there is another alternative. We all im encourage each other and interact so there is zero chance of it becoming a place without discussion or interaction.

We really need to see analysis for whale and dolphins upvotes and self votes. Because the portion of bidbots rewards were not that high to me.

Steem is not going to be killed by bidbots! Why are people making these assumptions? If it was??? Solve the problem. If not? You are barking up the wrong tree.

I would really like to see some data from your assumptions because what you are saying is not true at all.

I just explained it to you. The only reason i can pay for bots is because i earn rewards from those that have the SP to reward me. Once all SP is locked up in delegations you have to pay for it. With what exactly will you pay for it?.....

And on your Curie offering a solution.
Its not on Curie to fix the system. We are all speaking from an individuals perspective.
Curie has its role as support, a motivator and it does its job well.
What youre saying is: well if Curie cant fix it (as if Carl is Curie) ill just continue cutting the branch on which we all sit.

Curie cant be the doctor, the mechanic, the firefighter, the policeman, etc.
Which is why we havr role allocation.

You wouldnt say that steemcleaners need to fix the problems listed, would you?

Anyone who is complaining about bidbots without fighting for a solution is a person that I will tell to fix it. I tried for months to push whales paying delegations. Apparently I failed but at least I tried. My new solution is to use bidbots until I am financially secure enough to support my team on my own.

I said data. I didn't ask for an explanation.

You are making assumptions. The irony is!?! This post is asking for delegations!! Put down the koolaid and do some research. I am a curie curator just like you. Actually ive been a curator longer than you. I am not your enemy.

Your longevity as a curator doesnt mean much really. Youre just making an argument from authority.

Im saying bid bots are cancer. And its really not their fault. They have a use. But automation of monetary distribution will kill steem.
Youre participating in that for your own personal gain which is ok and your right, but at least acknowledge that your actions are to detriment to the platform.

I use bots as well, like i used it yesterday to take my curie promotion post to trending, not once did i use it to promote what i primarily do on this platform. That is for the commmunity to decide if i deserve to be on trending.
But i acknowledge that im participating in the s..t culture that is ruining steem. But youre just defending your position and defending the clear sickness because youre participating in iT and attacking Curie of all things. What?

You have a need to shut up those that attack bid bots. Why?
I cant fix the human trafficking problem but i can talk about it.

IMO utopian is nothing compared to curie. Curie supports members on the platform and at the same time support them in a way that they would not go against the rules and regulations. I have seen curie support a user more than 4 times. check https://steemit.com/@papaudeme. he is superb and he deserves it. Curie can still do more if it has enough Sp. I never got the big vote from curie so you should know I am not being sentimental. Utopian is filled with a lot of clueless people who change rules every single moment because the contributions from people will not make them achieve their selfish interests. My opinion though and ion think there is anything that can change that impression in me.

and let's not forget that they still take cuts from contributors even when they don't vote the contribution. Curie gives back everything made to the community. Utopian is just lucky and I believe it is just for a while. Curie is selfless and transparent.

I am not trying to debate but I just said my mind.

Curie gave hope to a lot of people and made them believe this platform has something to offer. Utopian is taking that hope.

Good night

This is such a good post. @curie does a specific thing and does it very well. On my writing Steemit blog Curie has given me more than one boost and it meant the world to me. They unearth excellent content from the mire and as an author that has been curried I cannot speak highly enough of how much they help.

It's all a big experiment in how this platform can work. Not sure if I've had a Curie vote, but I don't buy votes. I'm fortunate to have enough support to make something I'm happy with. The trending page is useless to me as it stands. I want to see what the community likes. I'm not against Curie, but I'd rather see votes spread across more accounts

I think it's fair to say that @curie is one of the 3 things that keep me on this platform (the other two being @teamaustralia and @comedyopenmic).

It's not just the money, but that made a difference to me. This is not because there weren't other ways I could earn $100. It's because I've come from a situation where my writing was accepted into a range of publications, not one of which has ever directly paid me a cent!

@curie deserves our upvotes, any delegation we can spare, and our witness votes. That they are at the bottom of the top 20 at the moment is a travesty - they should be much higher.

Curie is more than just a community, it's more than just advertising. Curie is a newbie's hope, it's an incentive that makes you work better, do more. Curie is the mastermind. I will never forget the joy of Curie's voice in my mail. And not only the earnings pleased me, but the fact of recognition of my work. Continue your great mission.

I received @curie vote more then once now, and every time that happened I was completely happy, I felt tremendous pride and joy!

I've read this post and read the comments. There simply can not be made a comparison of @curie with the bidbots. Curie is great and you only get if you have really contributed value to the community, and your earnings are not high. That is indeed a way to motivate a newcomer very much and to contribute a very positive value yourself. Bidbots ... well, my experience with bidbots is not that great. Maybe also because my earnings are not so high that I can / will give a lot to that. But my experience is that you have to pay attention or you lose money using bidbots.

Curie you can not buy, you earn a @curie vote. You can not earn bidbots you have to buy. A very big difference which for me only indicates that Curie adds value to the platform and the bidbots are ignored by me.

A bidbot does not recognize anything from you, does not recognize your work and does not make you proud of yourself. Curie does all that, and there is the true value from @curie besides the big vote.

So @curie, keep up the good work!

I love @curie and the contribution to the Steem platform cannot be understated. The problem with many of the communities I have seen is the complexity in joining and having to pay some kind of fee doesn't end up paying for itself. Qurator is a great example of the more money you give them, the better weighted upvote you will get. For the lower tiers, the vote doesn't really do much at all. In comparison a @curie upvote is like winning the lottery, especially if you're used to making cents or a couple of dollars per post.

Perhaps the greatest discovery I made recently is the beautiful @illuminati-inc (partnered with @curie) which rewards music focused content. An album review I wrote a few days ago got a nice upvote and a $17.87 payout. And before that, another music review I wrote earned $24 in payouts. It's these @curie votes that keep me going, because it feels so damn good to break the $2 mark, let alone $20+. Perhaps even more impressively was a post I wrote sharing a story from my childhood and earning $67 in payouts thanks to @curie yet again.

It's a shame I am not much of a comedian, because the #comedyopenmic tag gets a lot of love these days thanks to the generous efforts of curation groups and whales.

Words cannot express how grateful I am for every @curie or @illuminati-inc upvote I have received lately, it motivates me to post more content and better myself every time. If that's not contributing to the community, I don't know what is.

I didn't even know curie was supposed to babysit me 😷
I adore curie. It has looked out for me many times. It also made a great filtering tool. I'm late with my curie story but I delegate back half the sp from curied posts and I do vote and follow. I'm not sure what's to whine about. Curie is a blessing. Folks need to chill.

There are a ton of communities, if one but looks. Participation is key, and it's up to each user to decide their comfort level and how much they want to put into it.

As for Curie abandoning people, I've never felt that way. Curie boosting my post(s) was only part of the sweetness—Curie gave me confidence. And so many of the communities here overlap, that I feel like many curators have become my friends as a natural progression of participating in Steemit and high quality content.

But that first boost from Curie, the one I didn't even know where it came from until I asked a friend 'cause I hadn't heard of Gina yet and didn't have a clue what I was doing? That made Steemit real for me. Thank you for doing what you do! 💖

  ·  7 years ago Reveal Comment

people like u r not needed here