This article will cover some simple guidelines to follow if you want to improve this platform drastically. Many users might not realize how detrimental certain behavior is to SteemIt. After reading this article you will hopefully realize the potential consequences of your behavior. If we all start to follow these guidelines, the experience on SteemIt will be better for everyone (including yourself)!
Curators:
There is no autonomous system implemented into the blockchain to prevent unfair behavior. Until that system is implemented the only way to make this platform more fair is by making it more fair yourself! Below are the guidelines to follow as a curator:
1. Don't follow too many people
Try to follow less than 200 people. The more people you follow, the more you are effecting the platform negatively. The details are explained in my article why following too many people will only hurt them (and you). Below are some guidelines to follow:
Make your follow rules more strict
If you are following more than 200 people, you are probably following a lot of people of which you never see the content and/or never even interact with!
Stop trading followers
Do not ever trade follows unless you really really like their content. You might think it will help you get started, but it truly doesn't. SteemIt isn't Facebook! Followers are useless unless they love your content. There are many people on SteemIt with 1000's of followers that aren't making much money.
Do not follow users without content
In most cases you should only follow someone that is actively releasing quality content. There are of course exceptions (for example really good curator accounts that resteem only top quality).
Never follow someone only because they have a lot of STEEM POWER
Again, only follow top quality content creators. Popularity or STEEM POWER is irrelevant!
2. Flagging
Don't be afraid to use flagging! Currently it's a very underused feature on SteemIt. If you truly want to improve the platform, flagging might be the way to go! You will not get curation rewards anymore, but you are improving the overall experience of SteemIt, which is worth much more. The better the experience on SteemIt, the higher chance that SteemIt is going to take over Facebook some day.
You might not realize that flagging is much more effective than upvoting when it comes to reallocating rewards. Think about it this way: flagging someone takes away rewards from 1 person and puts it back into the reward pool so everyone can use the voting power you spent again, while voting on someone takes away a tiny bit of rewards from everyone. So by flagging someone you reduce the rewards of that one post and essentially divide it among everyone. By flagging high earning posts you are your own Robin Hood.
There is an unwritten rule that you should comment with the reason of your flagging though. It's not required but highly recommended.
3. Self-voting
If you truly want to improve the experience on SteemIt, you need to stop self-voting altogether out of principle! You have to realize that when everyone stops self-voting altogether, all content creators will earn more, meaning more content creators are happy. The more content creators are happy, the more this platform will grow. In the end you will earn much more by exclusively voting on others, because of the significant rise in the value of STEEM as a result of the increase in the overall value of the platform!
Authors:
As an author you have the responsibility to make this platform great by releasing quality content. Below are the guidelines to follow as a curator:
1. Increase your standards
You have to understand that each time you release content that is below average, you are essentially reducing the user experience of the platform. There is so much content out there. Every time someone releases below average content, average or above average content becomes harder to find!
2. Stop focusing on the money
The very best way to get more rewards is to make better content! Only publish content because you like creating it, then you are already getting satisfaction by making it. Positive feedback and money are just a bonus then!
3. Stop begging
Asking someone else (especially whales) to read or upvote your content without ever having interacted with that person will not accomplish anything. In fact, it usually accomplishes the opposite. If you are interacting with someone and your content is relevant to the conversation, then by all means be a little aggressive and show them your content. In short, try to have some interactions first.
Don't forget to follow, resteem and browse my channel for more information!
I really hate begging, coments like "nice work! btw follow me" even if they didnt read the article...trash
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Yep it's a big problem on SteemIt right now.
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Thanks little dude :p
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@calamus I recently wrote a similar article about this issue, but now I found yours and it is much better! I like how you broke it down in points and gave suggestions on how to be a better Steemian. Hopefully some newbies will take note and follow suit!
Resteemed since it is a very important message that can help shape the future of our community for the better.
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Thank you... Proper steemit etiquette is critical.
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that's a great article thanks for all the tips I'm sure that thanks to you many people will stop doing this mistakes thanks for sharing it and keep on posting ;)
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Can you explain in more detail the taboo against self-upvoting? It seems like a problem that will correct itself soon enough. When new users upvote their content it has almost no effect. When whales upvote themselves they pay themselves a reward that they can decline if they want to. If they abuse their position it will reflect negatively on their reputation.
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It's not really a taboo, it's more a controversial subject. I've explained it in more detail in my previous articles. You might find the info you need there.
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Thank u for shearing this post
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very Nice. Using the site as intended will only make it better as you pointed out.
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Yes it is true
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I love to follow people. I love freedom. I love quality. I love people. I love to beg. I love to do what I want to do. I do not like it when people tell me not to beg. I have some freedoms. People should probably follow who they really want to follow. How many people should people follow? Less than 200? Maybe. I am following over a thousand. Is that bad? It depends. I think it is a process that you cannot put an exact number on. I believe a lot of the things you wrote above is possibly and potentially or hypothetically too subjective and relative instead of objectivity from God. I do like the idea of being careful. People should focus more on content. People probably should spam less, perhaps, but the word "SPAM" is a word that is very relative and it is as general and undefinable as like fake news and CNN and many things. Good post. Good work. We are making Steemit great and greater than ever before.
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Freedom is good, but then you obviously can't expect everyone to act fairly or even rationally :)
There is a perfect balance between freedom and efficiency, SteemIt hasn't found it yet in my opinion.
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Agreed. But can people really find balance? I guess we can try our best. I love capitalism. I love rewarding people with more if they do stuff we like. It is a perfect trade. The best we can do is do our best to give more money to people we like. I do not want to steal money from people. I just want to focus on the people I like more and give them more money. I do not want to take too much or any money from people I do not like.
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A lot of people are greedy though, including me.
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I also feel that it is rigid to say to not follow more people than #insert a figure#. If I'm interested in multiple topics and there are quite a few people publishing relevant quality content, then why shouldn't I follow 500 people. If I'm OK with not always spotting the most useful posts, but like to be fed with more or less randomly-picked posts that I then decide to focus on - and this is what would happen if each of the 500 people published one article per day and my attention span probably sufficing to scan through 100 posts a day - then why not.
The problem is following people without a solid reason except for the hope that they follow you back to return the "favor". This is indeed something to advice against.
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I understand wanting to follow more people and we also both agree on the consequences :)
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"Asking someone else to help you without ever having interacted with that person will not accomplish anything"
I may have misunderstood something here, but isn't ending with "Don't forget to follow, resteem and browse" essentially contradicting your statement?
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Helping someone by reminding them about something is the opposite of asking for help.
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@calamus056, I never add anything in the end of my blogs such as follow me, resteem this blog or upvote me. I just post my blog. That's the principle that I have maintained from day 1 here.
My understanding is that if someone has come as far as to read your post, it is given, that he understands what those 3 words mean. So I don't need to "remind him". I have never reminded, but seeing a very steady growth of followers for my blogs. That's my way of looking at it. If your blog is good they will follow you or upvote you.
Take for example your instance. I came upon one of your blogs and it fascinated me. I went to your profile page and checked 2 more of your blogs. They were good too. I left some appreciating comment in all your 3 blogs back to back reading and I followed you. Now your blogs are in my feed and I am enjoying it. All these while did I get influenced by your reminder to follow, upvote and resteem??? A big NO. only your blog content made difference to me. Nor your reminder, nor your reputation.
What matters is only quality content and engagement with reader. Rest fall in line automatically.
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You're actually wrong, i wrote an article about following people and i got significantly more follows that day than normal. That's not a coincidence :)
At first i didn't have that footer either, but all bits help. It does help, that's just the unfortunate reality we live in.
Great that you have a lot of integrity! If only there were more people like you, that only follow because of quality content!
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Yeup, I totally misread it - my bad. Good pointers by the way, just wanted clarification on that one :)
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I'm not sure it's wise to suggest that people flag others too readily. Newcomers might get themselves into trouble before they realise the possible implications, and it could put them off the platform.
I don't really see a problem with self-voting for your posts, it is the default option in Steemit after all. I can see how people who make lots of money that way are reducing the value of the Steemit though.
You can use this tool for check for high self-voting though.
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New users that don't power up can't even flag $0.01 so that's fine :p
Self-voting for content is ok, but now people are doing it on their comments just to make money.
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Probably true - I haven't flagged yet.
If a user with a lower reputation tries to flag a user with a higher reputation, does it act on their 'potential payout' but not their 'reputation' or does it do neither?
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Flagging with lower reputation does very little to higher reputations. The payout always lowers based on voting power and STEEM POWER alone.
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Thanks.
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It sounds like you are advising to flag for the sake of it.
However, flagging is supposed only to be done for the reasons listed after clicking the flag button (fraud, trolling, spam and disagreement on rewads). I guess you primarily mean the "disagreement on rewards" point when you feel that a post has a disproportionally high potential payout compared to the value and originality of its content.
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@calamus056 right advice at the right time. You should probably also ask steemians to stop upvoting their own comments !. Any upvoting on their own post ( blog or comment) should be desisted upon.
I think I follow all your guidelines except perhaps looking up now & then to see how much is the payout for my post :)
I also won't be using the voting bots in exchange of a few $. I have done it once for my last post but can't decide whether it is right to buy upvote or not.
I have registered with steemvoters. But not added any authors there nor set my rules. Steemvoters will automatically upvote certain authors after exactly a certain amount of time (20-30 min after posting). So this does not warrant that you read the post, instead upvote automatically and strategically to maximize the curator rewards.
With the voting bots and automatic upvoting websites the rules of engagement changes.
Do you have any advise for newbies on those aspects. ?
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My advise about botting is simple: it's not worth it in the beginning :)
Curation rewards are so super tiny unless you have a lot of SP.
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Gold tips! Thank you @calamus056
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Very helpful and easy-to-understand post! Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks!
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This is good content @calamus056, thank you! People will always have differences of opinions. This is partly what makes conversations. If you are new to @steemit such as myself, why isn't it ok to ask for help? I try to help others when they ask. It's an overwhelming experience when first getting into this. The conversations are great! Hearing others thoughts and opinions may just open your mind to something you haven't thought of. Everyone's minds!
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Asking for help is fine and many will help you, but begging will work against you :)
I edited the sentence to avoid future confusion.
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Thank you for the post. Trying to figure out how to use this site and contribute has been interesting! Your post helped.
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Calamus056 from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
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I am new to SteemIt, and this post is something I needed. I was clueless of where to start from, and who to follow, or if I should follow everyone, or upvote everything.
But this article came across as a direction, and now I have a good idea of what to do and how to start. Much thanks. :)
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