Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S9W6 - Voting and Curation In Steem Blockchain

Assalamualaikum everyone.

Welcome to this post. I hope that all of you will be doing well and enjoying the time with the grace and blessings of Almighty Allah. Today, it's the right time to be a part of the last week's contest in the SteemitCryptoAcademy community. The topic of discussion for this week is very much interesting, Voting and Curation In Steem Blockchain. So, let's start the discussion without any wastage of time.

_{Thumbnail Created By WePik}

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Explain in your own words what voting and curating mean for content in Steem, do they mean the same thing? Show the difference between the two terms.

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Voting is a process of supporting the content of someone. We all are familiar with the concept of voting for a long time. The concept of voting is actually the what which is used in the conventional social media platform where we do likes the posts of others and this is a way of supporting them. We can take the example of Facebook that we like the post of others and this thing would be considered as voting in simple terms.

In term of the Steem blockchain, we know that this platform allow the users to support other user's content through upvotes. If we simply upvote the posts of others without judging their quality, their informative approach or without reading the post, then this process would be considered as voting. Voting in Steem blockchain is of two types, upvoting and downvoting. Upvote shows our positive feedback towards the content while downvote is considered as our negative feedback towards the content.

On the other hand...

Content Curation is the advanced form of the voting system and it involves the use of Proof of Brain (PoB) while voting and supporting others posts. There are many people who vote multiple posts daily but if they vote for them without reading the post, it would be considered as simple voting, not content curation.

Content Curation means we are supporting that content which is informative and adding knowledge to our mind. Moreover, curation means voting such a content which is free from any form of plagiarism, AI free and follow the other basic rules of writing. If we spend some time while reading the post and judging it's quality before voting then it would be considered as content curation.

In short, we can say that content curation is a time consuming process as compared to simple voting. Although, both of these things are apparently same and the curators or voters can earn rewards by either way but the working mechanism of both things is different. Content curation involves the use of Proof of Brain while curating the post.

We all know the other side of the picture that the content curators actually utilize the voting manna which is generated by their staking on the platform in the form of Steem Power (SP). The more the SP of a curator, the more will be the value of his/her vote. And also we know that the reward comes from the reward pool which is actually the storage house of the block rewards that are generated by the 21 witnesses of the platform.

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If we vote a content before 5 minutes or after 6 days 12 hours of its age in Steem Blockchain, will we have the same amount of reward as the other periods? Show how one checks the reward amount of a post that has returned to Steem Blockchain's reward pool?

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There is a term which is actually known as the curation window in the Steem ecosystem. According to this curation window, the first 5 minutes of the age of a post is actually known as the Reverse Auction period and during these first 5 minutes, the curation rewards are reduced with a linear fashion until the loss become 0 when the first 5 minutes are completed.

And, the last 12 hours of the age of a post is also the period of the reduction in the worth of the votes which are allocated to that post. The deduction in the voting worth starts from the time when the post's age become 6 days and 12 hours and it remains until the expiry of the post on the completion of the 7 days.

Moving towards the point, it is clearly concluded from the above two statements that the curation reward is different during these two periods as compared to the curation rewards that we get in the general voting time (5 min - 6 days 12 hours) of the content. The deducted rewards will be returned back to the rewards pool of the Steem blockchain.

Calculation of the Curation Rewards:

There is a formula for the calculation of the curation reward on any content. Thanks to dear sir @kouba01 for explaining this concept briefly and also giving this formula which is stated below.

Curator payout = (1/2) √PT (√P1-√P0) Δt

In this formula,

✓ PT = Payout on Expiry of Post (after 7 days)

✓ P1 = Payout of Post after vote

✓ P0 = Payout of Post before vote

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It is important to note that...

∆t would be,

1 if the time (t) is less than 5 minutes

And, t/5 if the time (t) is equals to or more than 5 minutes.

So, now we can say that the curation reward that we will get in the first 5 minutes would be less than the reward received in the general voting period. But some advanced curators usually curate the posts within the first 5 minutes and earn different rewards depending on their voting worth and some other factors.

Checking Reward Amount Returned...

We can check the returned amount of post reward from the steemworld.org website. We just need to click on the respective post for more info and there we will see the returned reward. Have a look on the below screenshot as an example.

_{S.S from steemworld.org}

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How can a curator earn more than 100% upvote value as curation rewards? Take any post you voted in Steem Blockchain and indicate the time and position of your vote, what is the projected curation reward?

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As I have already discussed that the voting window is the first thing that we should consider while curation. Yes, it is surely possible to earn more than 100% of the upvote value as a curation reward from a post and this thing will depend on the following things.

• Worth of vote
• Voting Position
• Time of Voting
• Total Payout
• Either we have voted before whale's vote or not

So, these are some things that can effect our curation reward from a curated post.

As I have already said that it is possible to get more than 100% of the curation reward as compared to the voting worth. Let me explain this thing with the help of an example.

Suppose, I have curated a post when its age was around 10 minutes. The worth of my vote is 0.10$ and the payout of post was 0.30$ before my vote and it becomes 0.40$ after my vote. After 7 days, the post expired with a total payout of 20$. So, now I will calculate the curation reward that I will get from this post. For this purpose, I will use the same formula which is discussed in above part.

Curator Payout = (1/2) * (√20) * (√0.40-√0.30) = $0.189

So, our curation reward is more than the worth of our vote. Furthermore, (0.189/0.10)*100 = 189%. So, we have got 189% of the curation reward as compared to the voting worth.

Practical Example

For the completion of this task, I will use one of the post that I have curated. The post was of the user @sahar78 and the post link is here. You can see from the below screenshot that I have earned 133% curation reward from that post.

_{S.S from SteemWorld}

_{S.S from SteemWorld}

From the above screenshot that, steemdoctor1 was the first curator of the post with positive vote. The total worth of the vote is 0.05$. I have voted after 5 minutes so there will not deduction in the curation percentage. The post is expected to payout at $8.64 so I will calculate my curation reward percentage.

• Worth of Vote = 0.05$
• Position of Vote = 1st
• Voting Time = 12 mins
• Curation Reward Obtained = 0.27 SP

0.27 SP is equals to : 0.25 * 0.27 = 0.067$

Now, 0.067/0.05 = 134%

So, I have earned more than 100% (134%) curation reward from this post. This reward would be even more if payout will be more. So, in this way we can earn more than 100 percent of our vote worth through curation.

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What is the role of curation in better content discovery in Steem Blockchain? Is self-voting beneficial for the reward system explain why?

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There is a great role of curation in the better content discovery on the Steemit platform. Content discovery means the ability of the users of a platform to access and view a content. If a post gets enough support from the curators then it will boost up the post and that post will be accessible for more users because it will be in the trending page.

So, curation play a vital role here. Proof of Brain must be followed while curating the posts because if the wrong post is being curated then it will surely impact the whole ecosystem and the users who are supposed to read that post with low quality of the content.

Another important benefit of the curation is that it encourage the content creators to create more unique and quality content in order to receive more and more support from the team. Moreover, curation is also the return of the creativity and uniqueness of the author which he/she utilizes while creation of the content.

When a content is being supported by the curators in the initial periods, it improve the visibility of that post on the platform and thus there are more chances that the post will gather the attention of more and more readers and curators as well.

Talking about Self Voting...

Self Voting is a feature which is exclusively offered by the Steemit platform and users can upvote their own posts. But there are some drawbacks of the self voting that must be considered first.

Although, self voting is somehow beneficial for the newcomers as they can upvote their posts and improve the visibility their post and thus their accounts on the platform and grow well. But, if self voting is done in the form of abuse then I will say it illegal act.

First of all, self voting reduce the support for the original content creators of the platform and they are not encouraged in this way. Moreover, the person who is involved in self voting for a long time is actually spoiling the network because he is showing selfishness and not supporting others.

Another disadvantage of the self voting is that the curation rewards that are generated through self voting are off course lower than the ones which are generated by the fair way of curation in the platform. So, these are some consequences related to the self-voting.

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Conclusions

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Voting and Curation are two different things. Voting simply means supporting a content and curation means supporting the quality and deserving content with the use of Proof of Brain. The curation reward that is obtained in first 5 minutes and last 12 hours of a post age are relatively lower than the general voting period. Curation plays a very important role in the better content discovery as it boost up the quality content. Self voting is an abuse if it is done for a long time.

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I would like to invite my friends @simonnwigwe, @malikusman1, @ashkhan, @aaliarubab and @suboohi to be a part of this amazing contest.

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