Community Service Announcement: Pinned posts by mod-bot

I first posted about this quite some time ago, but many people have arrived after that, so I thought it might be useful to reiterate an announcement that I made in the past about the use of a moderation bot in the Popular STEM community.

You may have noticed that when I post in this community, the mod-bot account frequently pins my posts.

To be clear, this is not because I'm trying to give myself an advantage as a moderator/admin of the community. Rather, it's because of a service that mod-bot provides to anyone who posts in the community. In fact, you may have noticed that some past posts by @o1eh and @massola and others have also been pinned for the same reason.

@cmp2020 wrote the experimental code behind mod-bot about two years ago, and I have been running it for Popular STEM ever since then. I wrote more about it, here. Here's a summary of how it operates:

Now, we have a total of five available "pinned" slots that our authors can take advantage of for increased visibility.

1. The top post in Popular STEM promoted posts
2. The second post in Popular STEM promoted posts
3. Cycles randomly through all other posts in Popular STEM promoted posts in proportion to the promotion amount.
4. The post in the community with the highest @null beneficiary setting
5. Randomly traverses through all other posts in the community with @null beneficiary in proportion to the beneficiary setting.

Because of the way that post-pinning works, these posts will appear in reverse-chronological order (newest to oldest).

In short, if a post in the community has a null beneficiary setting, or if it is promoted with SBDs (see here for the syntax), then it may be pinned in the community. The top-2 promoted and the top-1 @null beneficiary settings are always pinned. Beyond that, the likelihood of being pinned is proportionate to the size of the post promotion or beneficiary setting. The pinned posts are checked and rotated every 15 minutes.

Unlike Steemit's #burnsteem25 initiative, there is no minimum value to get a post pinned - either for post promotion or for the @null beneficiary setting (although mod-bot is capable of setting minimums, and that may be done in the future, if it seems appropriate).

Then and now, the idea was that authors can gain visibility in exchange for burning STEEM or SBD. I'm not generally a fan of burning for the sake of burning, but I think that burning in exchange for visibility or some other service is useful because it provides utility and increases scarcity.

So, the reason that my posts get pinned in the community isn't because I'm boosting myself as a moderator, but rather because I have beneficiary rewards set to go to @null and I promote my posts by sending SBDs to @null. Anyone can take advantage of this service (in this community).

The only caveat is that normal moderation rules still apply. If the post is spammy, off-topic, plagiarized, etc... it will be unpinned by a human moderator and it may also be muted in the community.

Another update that I haven't mentioned before is that I have also activated mod-bot in the Delaware Valley Life community, though I'm not aware of many currently active Steemizens in the Delaware Valley (South-Eastern PA, South Jersey, Northern Delaware, and North-Eastern Maryland), so use in that community is obviously limited.

There you have it. If anyone has been wondering about my pinned posts in the community, now you know.

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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