Should we upvote our comments?

in steemit •  7 years ago  (edited)

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As introduction i let you read my post about how could we upvote to help steemit growth:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@damarth/how-could-we-upvote-to-help-steemit-growth

Nowadays price of steem and Steem $ (SBD) increase sharply and adoption rate accelerate , a lot of money is now involved in steemit economy.
Even if i already have stated six months ago that my optimal voting strategy has 33% of my votepower going on myself and in average last few months i have voted for myself less than my optimal strategy, i often receive complain about the fact i upvote my comments.

In this post i will explain you how steemit ecosystem works and why it is totally normal and acceptable to vote for ourselves and hopefully quarrel will vanish.

There is different class of users on steemit network and unfortunatly i see more and more frictions.

To simplify i see three mains class:

.the authors and contents creators
.the investors
.the speculators

In fact These class are ridicoulus because as soon as authors get rewarded and hold steem or SBD they become a shareholder and an investor of steemit platform so they are incentivized to help the growth of the platform.

But you know human mindset like to make diffrence and create imaginary boundaries and quarrel for no real reasons.

I am in the fourth class, what ? you said there is three class?

Well as you understand these class are bullshit and we should not create false barrier.
Yes i am an author, i welcome new users with comments, i post when i can and i am also an investors as i bought steem tokens with my hard earned money and powered up, i vote and reward good contents, finally i am a speculator as i trade the tokens.

                        Investors mindset

Ask yourself : What give value to steem tokens?

When i talk about steemit and introduce people to discover the technology they often ask me this question :

Who buy steem token and why?

Actually this is a great question because if you can't answer it then you can't understand how steemit economy works.

The simpliest answer is SPECULATION, some people think steem token price will increase and they will be abe to make profits.
They bet with their hard earned money and take a financial risk because they expect to make profits.

Some people keep their steem liquid and don't power up they prefer to trade the token on the market, i call them speculators.
They are very important because they bring liquidity and volume to the market wich permit to everyone to sell or buy the token easily with minimum spread.

As soon as speculators power up and can't withdraw all funds for 13 weeks they becomes investors and shareholders.
It is a huge risk to lock funds for such time to motivate this moove they get curration rewards and become participants to the platform success.

Actually steemit generate no revenue , there is no buy back strategy with profits so all the steem earned from authors are sold on the market are bought from investors and speculators.

As you see authors can't really complain against investors because without investors and speculators the price of steem would be 0$, authors would earn nothing, most of them would not be so activce and the platform would have a very low adoption rate compared to today because there is a strong correlation between the price of steem and adoption rate.

Have a look to the great Penguin Pablo steem stats report and study how the stats moove regarding tokens price evolution:

https://steemit.com/@penguinpablo

More the price of steem increase , more authors get rewarded, more it create a free positive adverstising loop for steemit and adoption growth faster.

           Why authors should not complain about investors behaviour?

-Without investors and speculators steem token has no real value.

-investors take all the risks to make profits. To gain money they need steem token price to increase so they have to act in a way that help the adoption of news users and usecase of the tokens.

-Authors take no financial risk, they only risk to loose some time posting on a social media platform and not get rewarded for it. Look like it was not a big deal posting for free on facebook, twitter etc...

Investors have all the reasons to help steemit network to grow, help adoption, voting for good contents...

So Why the hell some investors vote for themselves? Yes why because it give less rewards to authors and it is not the best for adoption right?

Think deeply about it!

An investors need to be constantly motivated to hold the token and not selling quickly to lock profits.

=> distributing some of the rewards to ourselves help to keep holding the tokens. = less sell pressure = higher steem price.

=> It also show to authors and new users that there is some positive effect to buy steem tokens and not only wait for rewards.

=> Investors sell less tokens because they profit a bit more from it = less sell pressure on steem token = higher price for steem = more profits fro everyone.

=> motivate new users, speculator and authors to buy steem to vote a bit for themselves = more buy pressure = steem price increase...

=>when price of SBD is high (2x+ higher than streem price), SBD price increase doesn't profit so much to investors or authors but mainly to SBD speculators, when investors vote for their comments they get some steem $ and can add sell pressure to SBD price and buy back steem tokens with the profits as result steem price increase and everyone profits.

You could tell me it's the same if an investors vote for other people comments, not really because nothing insure us that the profits from SBD will be reinvested on steem and finally profits to everyone.

It is quite normal that when SBD price goes to 17$ while steem is priced at 3$ investors want to exploit and help to eqilibrate the situation.

This is the reason why at the moment i upvote a bit more often my comments and i upvote authors a bit less, i help to regulate the difference of price between SBD and steem adding sell pressure on SBD and i buy steem with the profits wich benefits to everyusers of the platform.

Ok but what happen if all investors becomes greedy bastards and start to vote only for themselves ???
Is it the end??

No because steemit ecosystem protect everyone. If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, valu of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!

At one point SBD price will go under steem price and there will be no more exploitative strategy everybody can return to what i think is the equilibrium strategy. (33/33/33)

                   Author mindset:

Authors want their work to be rewarded with fairness.

As stated before when authors get rewarded they automatically become a shareholder they also have decisions to make:

If they quickly need cash to live or don't believe steem value will increase they will directly cash out their profits nobody say anything about it, they are free to do whatever they want even if it create sell pressure on steem price, decrease the valu of steem token and everybody get rewarded less at the end.

But if they believe steem adoption will keep going up , they believe steemit technology is revolutionnarry and give financial power back to everyone , then they become investor and power up!

There is some greedy authors aswell attracted for some quick profit who permanently post shit, create multio account and constantly try to trick everyone in order to get rewards.

But i don't care , why? Simply because long term these people don't matter, over the time everyone see what they are doing and they will not profit much and for long, it doesn't really impact the platform.

On steemit we get to know each over, we finish to like contents creators and it is a pleasure to vote for them. As investors it is a pleasure to read good contents and rewards them. It feel good to give money to people that deserve it.
Scammers posters will never get anything significative.

One special word for authors that post great contents and doesn't get the rewards they deserve, don't loose faith, be patient, stay active and develop connection with other steemians, it take time to be valued as you should simply because there is so many new post and authors per day.

Step by step your work will be rewarded, no doubt about it :)

To conclude , each participants to steemit ecosystem is a decision makers, the ecosystem will always find an equilibrium wich profit to everyone in the long term, it is a very powerful system and it is one of the biggest reason why i believe so much on the success of the platform.

With this post i try to explain you different scenarios case of abuse and exploitative behaviour from differents interest coming from all participants of steemit economy to let you understand that action create reaction and at the end you can toy with all possible scenarios and finally be insure that steemit ecosystem is protected by Game theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

If SBD isn't too high compared to steem , you could decide to downvote some investors that only vote for themselves for a very long period of time to be sure they don't exploit the system too much while others investors stay balanced with a 33% strategy but at the end keep cool because nobody can really abuse the system without risking to loose more than what they could win.
Risk reward and expected value are simply not positive when somebody try to abuse the platform long term.

Happy new year to everyone!

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Thank you for posting this!

As I've been saying over and over again, the opinions of the investors need to be better represented here because they drive all the value we enjoy and so many people don't understand their perspective.

At Steemfest, I was up till almost 4am talking with transisto to better understand his perspective because he invested a lot here. Understanding the motivations and vision of the investors is hugely important for the future success of this platform.

If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, valu of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!

This, I think, is the key concern many have. They think any amount of self-voting for simple comments puts the whole platform at risk (and serious existential risk at that). Examples are shown here: Whales: You Have Some Flagging to Do.

$150+ votes for the same "SBD Correction" comment over and over again is a big problem for the ecosystem. Some people here (cough berniesanders cough) don't seem to care about authors, investors, or speculators. They seem to just like creating drama.

If investors buy STEEM via their extra SBD reward that could increase the value of STEEM, but couldn't that also be offset by those who avoid investing because they see STEEM as a scammy blockchain that pretends to reward authors and curators but actually rewards self-voting "greedy" investors?

I think you make a lot of great points here and do a great job of encouraging people to trust in the long-term value potential here. I also think you may be under-representing the existential risk of mass self-voting and what it could do for the long-term value of the platform and token. Maybe I'm wrong there, but if everyone started self voting, the signal to noise ratio would get pretty messed up and we could lose quite a large portion of our community (authors, readers, investors, and speculators) because of it.

I had a detailed discussion about this 6 months ago: Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?

If there's anything I can do as a witness (currently number 10) to better represent the views of investors like yourself, please let me know. This post is a good start. I can now send people here when they start complaining about the "greedy whales" without better understanding how they create all the value everyone enjoys (something I keep repeating over and over again).

I might get a solution to unfair abusive behaviour:
I would like the steemit developer to cap the self comments upvote to 33% of voting power per day, i think it's fair and well balanced enought for the ecosytem.

I think if steemit developers cap the self comments upvote to 33% or more of the voting power per day. it's fine but wouldn't it create room for others to cheat?

I agree 100% that ......If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, value of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
Voting quality contents is imperial to steemit's success. Steemit is an investment of wealth and intellectual asset. Let's create wealth today for a better tomorrow.

After reading your post I visited the profile to flag such comments and I saw that content of the comment has changed. It says "This is helping SBD correction, which is good for Steem". Has anybody explored further as to what that means?

Is it something meaningful or is it just a way to avoid all the negativity they are facing?

Screen Shot 2018-01-17 at 11.50.29 PM.png

For the first time in... maybe ever? I gave my comment a full upvote. Feels weird to me. How does it feel to you?

I have read your posts about why you generally don't up-vote your comments. It has made me think but I have still stuck to upvoting my own comments whenever I don't feel bad about it.

Sometimes I upvote my comments to increase the visibility and at other times I upvote my comments as I would have spent time writing it. I generally don't upvote my comments if they are short ones like "Thank you" or "Good post". But whenever I feel that I have added some value I make it a point to upvote my comments. Whenever I am in doubt I upvote my own comment and make it a point to upvote a few other comments which have added value to the post.

In my opinion what differentiated steemit from other blogging platforms is the kind of interactions that happen in the comments section. One of the driving factors could be the rewards for comments and if upvoting their own comments is a motivation for people to engage with others I don't see a problem with it.

Would like to know your thoughts on the same @lukestokes

I'm all about upvoting other comments to encourage the interaction you're talking about. When you upvote your own comments, it can be seen (by some) as increasing the noise and decreasing the signal. Obviously the author (in this case) thinks the comment is valuable or they wouldn't bother writing it. What matters is what the network thinks. That's a true signal. Sometimes I don't upvote a comment if I see they've already given themselves a self-vote.

I'm a little disappointed they removed the option to decline payouts on comments so you could still get the visibility, but it was apparently a bit to complicated for most users.

Ultimately, people can do whatever they want, and they will have the reputation their actions give them.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Don't be ashame to upvote your comment here , you spent time writing this comment and time has value because we only have a limited amount of time in our life!

You also deserve some extra profits from all the work and positive impact you have on the platform.

Damarth, this is a very strong point and the meaning of being an author ,if yourself cant appreciate your work ,whre is the meaning of your job. I am still new here but with short moment i can upvote your work , you have done a great job by this post today . keep up ! I wnt to learn more from you!

Quick question though: I recall the witnesses recently discussing that self upvotes would no longer count toward the author's account but rather be absorbed back into the rewards pool for the day. As a whale your upvote holds a life changing amount of money for others. Since your vote doesn't cost you anything- you're not losing anything by voting- why not spread it around by upvoting those who comment on your work as well as upvoting those who are starting out? I'm not sure where the current conversation is regarding self votes being reabsorbed into the rewards pool as I'm not a witness, but if your self votes were just getting lost back into the voting pool then it doesn't make any difference if you're upvoting yourself. Is that correct?
I found @damarth though a comment and upvote that he made on a friend's introduction post. Thanks man! Really appreciate it on behalf of my friend @stylebeautylife

What are your thoughts on this?
Lizelle

HF20 has changes related to the initial window where curation rewards currently go to the author. You can read more about that from Steemit's own publications, but HF20 isn't live yet.

As for what people do with their own stake, remember, investors want a return and it's ultimately their vested stake to do with as they wish. Almost all of my voting power goes towards voting other posts (I don't even vote up my own root posts as most everyone else does). It "costs" something in terms of voting power. Since I flagged some abuse recently my voting power was down to 50%. With steemvoter down, it's starting to come back up now.

Voting for those who are starting out sounds easy, but takes a lot of time. That's time I don't always have. There are many responsibilities for me to manage, but my witness account delegates to a number of services that are helping curate content. You can see my recent post about that.

Thanks for your reply @lukestokes.
Thank you for all that you do. It does take forever to get through everything and yes, we're definitely here to get a return on our investments. I apologize if you felt I was attacking you. I meant that as far as I understand any votes for oneself are void, so it wouldn't make a difference either way. They were also talking about penalizing you if you vote for the same person too many times, which makes no sense to me.
Thank you for the links, I will go have a look. Hope you have a good day further.

good to see you back, i thought u have quit :)

Hello, no i am just super busy, i am on steemit for a long time :)

First of all a happy new year. I have been very impressed by your post because in my little two-month stay on this platform I have realized that what you say is true, there are many types of class of people. For example, in my case I am from Venezuela and I have given that many Latin Americans are of little mind who only think about winning and nothing more they do not think about their future in their voting power in their investment they just want to win and now. I think that everything has to be balanced in this life and that everything has to be controlled in its own way. Today two days that you have uploaded your post.

The Steem has broken a sweep and today it has reached $ 8 and the SBD at 10, will it be that the Steem manages to reach the SBD? I bet if I could do it.

In this life you have to think as an investor you have to think that today you win but tomorrow is another day and you must also do it and think big

Hello @damarth I admire the great effort you put into writing this insightful post. It takes a deeper understanding of the steem ecosystem by people like you to come up with this submission. I have to admit that it took me a second reading of this post before I could fully comprehend and understand your stand point on this matter.

Thank you for throwing in my light on it. I always ensure that my knowledge is fetching me more than my ignorance is costing me. Now resteeming this post for more views because it's worth reading by everyone.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)
One special word for authors that post great contents and doesn't get the rewards they deserve, don't loose faith, be patient, stay active and develop connection with other steemians, it take time to be valued as you should simply because there is so many new post and authors per day.
When I first joined steemit, I saw unworthy post getting huge rewards and I almost felt like giving up. Then I remembered I wasn't in for the money, I wanted to share my ideas with the world, so I stayed and continued doing what I was good at - authoring immaculate contents. I think I'm beginning to get people's attention now.

What I want to add is that consistency and perseverance is also needed.

If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, value of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
I agree with this analogy. Voting quality contents is imperial to steemit's success. Not raping the reward pool by voting "shit post." Because in the future these contents would also provide intellectual assistance to researchers or someone just looking for a piece of information. Just like Wikipedia and wikihow is helping millions today.
In summary, steemit investment of wealth and intellectual asset.

What someone DESERVES or NOT is subjective. It is a mix of perseverance, hard work, quality content AND a bit of luck.
The problem here is that people try to force their luck by asking to be upvoted by bigger accounts (which to me is totally fair, they are promoting themselves after all, hey) but when they don't get what they want or think they "deserve" they turn around and trash talk the very people they wish would help them out.

That is simply the issue. "deserving" is a loaded word. And HIGHLY subjective.

One could argue that someone who invests heavily deserves the right to upvote whatever he chooses to. After all, his upvote rewards are high for one simple reason: he risked his money.

There are many sides to one story.

The calculations are made with a small amount of STEEM in the form of STEEM Power. Content creators have the right to choose a 100% STEEM Power prize instead of the default 50% liquid currency (a combination of STEEM and Steem dollars) and 50% STEEM Power. Users and investors have the option of converting liquid STEEM to STEEM Power, also called powering up.

I agree 100% that ......If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, value of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
Voting quality contents is imperial to steemit's success. Steemit is an investment of wealth and intellectual asset. Let's create wealth today for a better tomorrow.

I have heard a few complaints about self voting whales and a few arguments in their favour. I believe those who earn themselves large amount of SP as investors or popular authors earned the right to use it at their discretion however not to the detriment of the platform. I usually see you upvote posts in the introductory section and then upvote your comment too(I have tried to upvote lots of your comments in the past to get some curation reward) . In most cases, I believe those who received your upvote would be grateful and investors upvoting themselve is natural as there must be ROI. The problem is cross voting whales who only vote in their circle regardless of the nature of their content. Voting pattern should be balanced between self voting and quality content voting. IMO

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I agree, some whales should think more deeply about their act, understanding that they have more responsability as the biggest shareholder and at the end it is counterproductive for them to exploit the system at maximum in their favor.
I hope this post let everyone think deeply about our behaviour on the platform and how should we all balance our strategy for the benefit of everybody.

Yes, I believe reading this post will help whales see the better approach and make the platform a better one for all the classes of users involved.

Agree that balancing selfvoting and quality content voting is the way to go. Whenever we upvote our comments, making sure to upvote some other good comments can be a balanced strategy. I am upvoting your comment as it is adding value. I upvoted my earlier comment on this post as I felt it added value and as you mentioned there is nothing wrong in looking at ROI.

"If SBD isn't too high compared to steem , you could decide to downvote some investors that only vote for themselves for a very long period of time to be sure they don't exploit the system too much while others investors stay balanced with a 33% strategy" In fact, everything is explained in this sentence. @damarth

Hello, thanks for the interesting post. Maybe I have a good post for you with a chart, where you can see the correlation between Steemit activity values and Steem price: https://steemit.com/steem/@sevenseals/steem-statistic-charts-week-53

And here is a post about SBD price , SBD supply and SBD inflation and how it correlates: https://steemit.com/steem/@sevenseals/new-chart-steem-dollar-price-and-steem-dollar-supply-calculation-of-sbd-inflation

Hope you enjoy it.

Sure i do thank you very much!

"There is some greedy authors aswell attracted for some quick profit who permanently post shit, create multio account and constantly try to trick everyone in order to get rewards.
But i don't care , why? Simply because long term these people don't matter, over the time everyone see what they are doing and they will not profit much and for long, it doesn't really impact the platform."
I think this is the most important part of writing.this platform is out of balance with the money input output and they are trying to make money.the quality of the produced hides has no significance for them. Thanks for sharing..@damarth

Self upvote is a tricky subject.
This is a good article and touch a lot of point.
Writting a post is not a joke unless you post meme or post a picture. Don't get me wrong, meme or picture earn substantial reward compare to writting a post.
I am not going to take my valuable to feel pity about that.
It pushes me to do better and invest more time to myself.

Conscientiously all steemians need to know deep down inside what is your role in steem.
I applaud all steemians who vote all posts they deem worth a reward.
Sincerely I do not wait for anyone to upvote my posts. If I earn a big reward from upvote I know it is worth it.
And I thank everyone for their support.
Keep on steemit.

Thank you. it is very kind of you.

One of my favorite lines in your post - "But you know human mindset like to make diffrence and create imaginary boundaries and quarrel for no real reasons." You said it perfectly.

I am very thankful for the speculators. As you say, without them, steem would be $0.00

Thank you for your comment, i would like to extend this thinking process saying that if everybody took enought time to understand each other maybe we would live more peacefully in this world. At the end we are all humans and living on a beautiful blue planet sharing the same oxygen, water and ressources to be and stay alive the best way possible, we should not shit on our home instead take care of it for a long term perspective, don't use more ressources than what can produce our earth to let future generation be happy as we are... One day i will post about it but i could not refrain my words :)
Happy new year!

"enough time to understand each other" You are so correct. I did notice that some of the comments you received, they did not bother to read your post and attempt to understand your perspective. We should at least attempt to understand where someone is coming from before we engage in debate.

I am super excited about 2018, it's going to be HUGE!

I also have high expectation about human kind!
We can do it!

I really agree with what you have described. I just joined on this platform and new post introduce that I share. before I bought some steaks from my brother to buy a delegate. because I think the ecosystem that runs is not appropriate. many projects have been developed to be able to get contributions from the author. but after I observe the project only for their own. for us small fish can not start where but instead collect money and buy delegates to vote for ourselves. this may not be wonderful for the crowd. but the situation that has forced it. In some posts of introduction myself, I see many who vote. like you who have provided an adequate voice for them. but not much like you do. if a lot of big social fish like you then this platform will be a bright window for digital currency. besides, I hope that @blocktrades can do a way so that people can buy the rights to lease delegates with their own sp without power down so they small fish will quickly develop later. maybe this is only an opinion that I can submit for a while. thanks for sharing sir. i like you.

If we all just self-vote then Steemit will get worse and just die. We need to spread our votes around to people who are doing good work. Okay, so some of them may cash out, but others can buy their Steem. I just don't think we are qualified to judge the quality of our own posts and comments.

Did you read the post @steevc ?

Your point is answered. You say "If we all just self-vote then Steemit will get worse and just die"
but your "IF" suggest a situation that will not happen by the simple fact that big investors won't rationally self-vote up to crash the platform since it would drive the price of steem down HENCE their Power Up down.

You start your argument with an illogical statement.

It is a simple equilibrium. But people just like to whine first and think (or actually never seek to understand) the natural balance.

And just like every equilibrium, it is never perfectly at balance point, it goes down and up, so at times, there will be more self-vote, and others there will be less.

It's always about trying to shame the very people who are putting a project in the spotlight in the first place, by actually putting money into it.

I did skim the post, so I might have missed some subtleties :) The fact is that if self-voting increases then the quality of top posts will decrease. It's supposed to be about rewarding quality content, not just according to who has the most SP. I appreciate that people want a return on their investment.

I do see rampant self-voting happening. Some are blatant about doing it purely for greed and there's not much we can do to stop them except to have whales flagging them and to encourage voting on the good stuff. It is in the interest of big investors for Steemit to succeed as the potential gains are much higher than they are now. I know some whales are countering the abuse, but it may not be enough. A lot of the minnows may be tempted to join a 'dash for cash', but they are unlikely to get much whale support, so it may be futile. I want to see everyone have a chance to do well and not just a selected few. This is why I spread my votes around and delegate to others.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I think the "whales" problem with the control of supply in few people hands is one basic principles of a new born technology. Whales are not a selected few they are not here by harzard.
If a new technology is successful early adopters get rewarded from the research they done before anyone else and the fact they trust enought their vision to take risk and invest into something than nobody else believed in.
More the project advance and the adoption / price increase more and more early adopters (whales) take gradually profits and distribute the supply to the point where the supply is no longer in the hands of fews persons.
It is a normal market reaction.
I let you have a look at the Bitcoin supply distribution, even now few people hold a large amount of BTC supply:
btc wealth.jpgthousands

Some people invested in Steem early on and stand to profit from that. I know some people bought when it was up around $4 in the early days. That's fair enough. I didn't have money available to invest, but I've been able to earn a nice amount.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Investors don't want steemit to die or they will loose everything. If you read my optimal posting strategy linked in introduction you will know that i advocate to spread our voting with a balanced strategy.

Do you understand that if investors gain a bit more, they will continue to buy and hold more steem wich increase the value of steem and benefit to everyone?

I don't think anyone is qualified to judge action of steemians users on the platform as the ecosystem is protected by game theory and will always find an equilibrium that profit to everyone.

Everyone is free and steemians interest from differents class all converge to the same road.

Things have changed a little since your other post. I think less people choose 100% SP on their posts. I have chosen to not self-vote as it just feels wrong to me. Luckily other people think my posts are worth something.

Damarth, I applaud your deep, holistic thinking into the functioning of Steemit.

I also read your post from 6 months ago - "How could we upvote to help steemit growth?" Your dividing your voting power into 3 groups -

  1. Noobies with good content;
  2. Old, established posters with good content who you follow
  3. Yourself

I think that is a very balanced approach. And thank you for an upvote 2 days ago. As a noobie, that does motivate me to post more.

Thanks for you comment!

totally agree with the great analysis. The Steemit platform cannot actually create wealth unless there's a willing buyer or a willing seller. There are so many people with different agenda on the platform and it's the community of different interests that gives value to Steemit. No market can work if everyone decides to take one particular side of the market. If everybody abuse the system in the long term, then it will break down in the long run.

I have heard/listened some complaints about self-voting whales, and there were several arguments to agree. I believe that those who make a large amount of SP as an investor or popular writer gained the right to use it at their discretion, but they do not damage the platform of steemit. I usually upvote an article in the introduction section and see your comment upvote by the way I tried to upvote your comment in the past to gain some curation rewards. In most cases, I believe that those who received your upvote appreciate, upselling investors and investors are natural as R.O.I is needed. The problem is a cross voting whale voting only within a circle regardless of the nature of the content. The voting pattern needs to be balanced
Thanks for posting @damarth
And hope you follow back

Well i always asking me if is good idea upvoting for my comment, and only do it when in my post i translate from spanish to english, because i do an aditional efforce and work aditional(mi natural language is spanish) but 33 for autors/33 comment by others and 33 for ourselves comment it sounds extrange for me because you get 66% for you, i always upvoted the comment put by others in my post because they read, they view the photos of my post and upvoted for me for this reason i upvoted 99% of people which comment in my post, some times people uses scam and only say 3 works and you do not see his upvoted in you post, you only answer but not upvoting their comment ok, it is my case.
Well respect to be an investor active, recently i spend a lot of my earn in delegacion of steem power hope grown efectively but the result not was the better, i only recover around 44% +/-, but my follow increase a lot.
But how i get the earn from this, it is not count, well another thing, i always coming here to grown and always uses my sbd to get sp, to help others and you too, recently with the hight price of sbd hight could grow a little more, but we continued here to grew and help to other people with good contents.
Well finally have a happy new year.
Thank for the aclaracion, your topics sounds similar to Jordan Bellfort the wolf of wall street.
(Please excuseme for my english mistakes)
Best regard @galberto

i advocate to vote 33% for myself / 33% for people i like (new steemit users, family , sreemit friend, life friends...) and 33% good authors.

I like to vote for new users because it always good to get a warm welcome on unknown platform, i want them to have the best first experience and i always learn something reading at presentation post. Some people are so nice, i like to share happiness.

Amazing, some curators team give happiness here, well thank for the topics.
Best regard. @galberto

this is my first time that I see your post and now i'm following you thank you so much for informations
have a good day my dear @damarth

you are amazing @damrth, you are so wise I agree with your thoughts if all the writers have a view like you then will not bullshit context in this platform

Nice poste and you have a great upvote
Can you see my blog if you want 😍😍😍@damarth

highly qualified posts.
but I want to ask your opinion. how do you feel about bitcoin prices in early 2018.
whether progressively or vice versa.
how do you think and the opinions of btc users around the world?

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

It is quite difficult to answer your question because there is a lot of speculation involved in such short period of time and i could not simplify all the thinking process in one simple post.
From a trading perspective i think BTC need to cool down a bit for few weeks before next moove up, altcoins deserve some love after a huge 6 months correction and it already appear on the BTC dominance index that investors redistribute some BTC value to altcoins.
Later in 2018 it is surely possible to see a new ATH for BTC.

Which is worse?

1 - A person with a large following who simply states "If you like what I've said, feel free to upvote and/or resteem. But their followers like his advice so much that he often earns $100 to $300 per post. No forcing people to upvote, no demanding do it or else, simply providing good solid information that is helping people make money. Information that people inside and outside of Steemit could probably benefit from, especially if they are new to cryptocurrencies.

2 - A whale with 40+ bot accounts that uses those accounts to downvote anyone who does not immediately say "Yes Sir, your wish is my command". Literally taking pennies away from the very people who can least afford it? Of course, all the while they are also making big bucks from their group of friends that are upvoting every word they say?

Who is raping the reward pool? Is not one of the main ideas behind all of this that the people decide what they like and what they don't? Other than some newbies who do not yet understand the system, the vast majority of upvotes are done by people who think the author deserves a reward for their efforts or by the bots owned by the whales who sell their vote to the highest bidder.

Everyone needs to stop the bickering and start working towards what is going to keep Steemit viable for the long term. That means working toward COMMON GOALS. Every man for himself as it is currently working will bring the system down eventually.

Hello, i disagree on the state of the network, i may be wrong but i don't think there is so many "whales" "raping" the rewards pool. If is true then they are shooting a bullet on their own foot and we can change their mind simply explaining how steemit ecosystem work and could benefit to everyone by simply acting with fairness.
Who is doing your number 2? i can help to explain them it's not beneficial long term to do it or simply share this post whith "unbalanced exploitative whales".

Oh, did I say there were many? I have personally seen two. As for saying who it is, I will not because most of the people I know who have posted the proof, have been targeted and seen all their earnings wiped out on post after post after post. It is easy to wipe out the little 1 cent to 10 cent the majority earn when you have 40 + bots, each with the ability to wipe out hundreds of dollars in one single downvote.

If you google the search term "steemit whales abuse" you will see many posts that name many of the culprits, but I did not see a post regarding the worst one I have personally seen. You may have to read some replies to the post to see that information.

I believe you are much like me and would prefer to think people would use logic and think about the welfare of others. But the reality of people is, there are some cruel people in this world and some of them are on Steemit.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I see, thanks for sharing it.
You didn't explicitely said there are many whales doing it but to rape the reward pool it imply enought steempower has bad behaviour to impact the rewards distribution...
Ho yes i am sure some people will never change their mind and act as assholes whatever we say, i still think the vast majority of persons adapt their behavior when we take time to talk between each other.
I was not aware of some vendetta against minow.

See, this is another area that causes problems. What exactly is enough to be called raping the reward pool? That phrase is thrown around by many but there is no definitive answer so no one puts much thought into it. The person I follow who was the one attacked so relentlessly, rarely had a post make more than $300 and many were only $20. But every single upvote was by a real person, not a bot. In my mind, if he is providing information good and detailed enough to have 30 or more people upvote him (again real people, not bots) should it matter how much he makes.

The other person has enough power on 40 or more bots, to downvote every single penny this person made and many of his followers. His stated reason was because the other person was raping the reward pool.

Every time one of his bots upvote one of the other bots it gives it more than $100 each time, is that not raping the reward pool.

The problem is, there needs to be a consensus as to what is allowed, and write the code to enforce it. This leaving it up to each individual to make their own decisions and giving them a system where they can easily abuse others, will do nothing but create an ever increasing number of people who will abuse the system out of greed, with no regard to what is best for Steemit.

I am not willing to put any more money into steemit as long as this can happen. I could put a lot more in, but I don't want to put money into a system where someone can so easily prevent me from earning.

I tend to put 4 to 6 hours into each post because I do my research to double check all the facts I have in my head and make sure every image I use is credited. That is a lot of effort to see one person wipe it out because they disagree with my post.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I guess when you are a victim of unfair vendetta from high ranked steempower user you can ask for help, i am sure a lot of people can start to upvote you to defeat the downvote, if the bad actors continue to bully you then the pool of "good actors" can directly downvote the bad one...I am sure we will stop the fight pretty quickly.

Community will always win.

Someone should take care of complaints and daily post about it, so we directly know wich user is "certified" in need to be helped.

I think, we don't need new code to take care of this problem simply organize the community in a better way.

How do you know who are the good guys and who are not. I am fairly new and don't have a very big following yet. My reach is very small and if every one of them joined together to try to stop them, it would barely be a smack on the wrist. Perhaps if we had a group working specifically to grow for this goal???

Someone would have to take this role in charge and do it seriously, this person would be paid by vote and the post would be view by the majority of the community who daily check all complaints and vendetta downvote activity. Each person could read the report and easily see with proof wich steemit user is unfairly bullyied by others and need help (vote tp counterdefeat the downvote).
Persons that often downvote for vendetta reasons would rapidly be flagged by the community.
It's is actually a great idea for someone to work and generate revenue helping the fairness of steemit community.
Who want to take care of it?

its good to to talk on it and also explain in detail and the liquidity of steem is still going down day by day and some says its will more go down in next over all we see the market and will going to power up for long term earning....also happy new year to u @damarth

great analyze sir @damarth, there is nothing wrong for self up voting instead it will help the growth of community.

I would actually prefer not to change the order of the posts based on the votes; I feel it would be better to keep post in chronological order. In some cases, the chronological order of the posts is important to understand the discussion, and I actually am not really able to understand that based on upvotes/downvotes. I think that ...

This is a very good explanation how things work on here. I thought that only greedy people upvote their posts 😁😁😂 but after reading your arguments it makes a sens.

Thanks for explaining the situation, i think a lot of people will change their minds now.

Thank you, It take efforts to understand all point of view and all interest involved in each participants decisions.
The most interesting part is the game theory apply to almost every sector of our lifes.

Every new thing needs some adaptation and time to understand, you are completely right! I'm a half of year on Steemit and i still don't know a lot of things 😁😁😁

The reward to be earn will always motivate people to be here on steemit. Therefore all kinds of people whether good intention or bad will try to earn more money. Like you said all steemit participants are in a way investors to steemit, stackholders if they have SP, so at the end of the day bottom line if people want steem to last forever the use of the platform should have only good intention.

There are plenty of ways to earn crypto in the space, and steemit is no different. The self upvote on comments is definitely getting worse I think. I kind of feel jealous when I see users who upvote themselves over $1 for a two to five word comment. The fact that SBD is currently more in value than Steem is enticing users to buy delegated SP. Some use those SP to upvote other's content while others do massive upvotes.

Looking from an investor perspective he or she bought the delegated SP in hopes to earn more than what they put in. That in a way is using steemit platform to earn more. It takes time and somewhat luck to be able to figure out ways to earn more on steemit. I think of this as a free market play where people make a bid for items in hopes to sell back later for profit. The self upvotes in turn hope for bigger returns. However in free market there will be a point where the bubble will burst. When it becomes a lost to buy a upvote from a bot or steem delegation to upvote one's content.

With less than 1 million users on a 7+ billion population it seems steemit is in its infancy. When free market does play out we may or may not still have a working steemit. I hope its a working steemit :)

Lovely post! Subscribe, not to miss new posts

This post has really been insightful... Just being 10 days old on steemit, I pratically have no idea on how it works around here... So I'm glad to have read this. Thanks

Welcome! I am Happy to help you to understand how the steemit ecosystem work.

Yea oviously we have to ☺☺☺ @damarth

A very well explaination by you dear

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

i never upvoted my self in comments for sure and i don't think its a good idea to do anyways wishing you a Happy New Year

Still learning about this, so I am glad I could read the post!

We need to spread our votes around to people who are doing good work.
Happy new year! @damarth

Of course we need to vote for good contents but there is different kind of interest and everyone should be satisfy to give the best value to steemit.
Going at war against ionvestors is counterproductive because at the moment without investors and speculators steem has 0 value.

I don't know how to be more popular and be more supported. I just share my experiences. Please tell me ways!
Many thanks your post, @damarth!
Happy new year! :)

Very nice, happy new year 2018 success always..

happy new year

i guess you are right, authors need investors for steemit to survive, i think steem can survive without the authors but cannot survive without the investors.you should be appreciated for investing your hard earned money on steem

Steemits current model needs both investors and authors. Although investors are more important as it is. It only needs a healthy balance of contribution and remuneration since it's built on the premises that people get paid for their contents. I think high powered folks on here can support themselves and other quality content they find and maintain a good balance. It's win win.

I think it's ok to upvote your self, if someone is working hard to earn that steem power why he have to reward just others and earn cents ? not all the people are thankful so it's ok to upvote your self, because we are here to grow and earn good money that will make us do better on steemit, money is the motivation that makes us and the community better !

English is not my native language, so I managed to translate and understand =)
Fiou!

Thank you for taking the time to write your point of view!

happy new year my friend .. please help unvote have me my friends yes

Hi @damarth

Im so glad i found you and this post Im struggling so much on how to explain steem to investors and how to promote this properly. You have helped me a lot! Please id like to know your answer to this question.

How would you present steemit on a national tv?

Again thank you so much!

Francis from Philippines

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I guess, first i would present it as the modern version of Facebook using blockchain technology and directly sharing in a decentralized way the profit from expansion of the network between authors and investors. Then i will explain some basic of the ecosystem, introduce the potential of steemit blockchain with Dapps in development (Dtube, Dsound...) , the arrival of SMTs to digitilize social media contents industry, remember that steem is also one of the fastest currency.

Thank you! Youre the first person who answered my question about this... Ill be sure to go back at this comment when the time comes. Hopefully I can also initiate some kind of seminar motivating investors in my city to purchase steem.

Happy New Year, my friend @damarth ! Thanks for the explanation and support! I've been in Steemit for over a year and I'm very happy here!

Woow good post you fren

Amazing informaton
investing money buy the steem power and got great results
@damarth you are rock because you help the steemit community day by day about your best informative articles

I agree 100% that ......If investors stop voting for authors, adoption will fall, value of the network will decrease to oblivion and at the end investors will loose everything!
Voting quality contents is imperial to steemit's success. Steemit is an investment of wealth and intellectual asset. Let's create wealth today for a better tomorrow.

Great opportunity from you...thanks..hope i got it..

hello bro. can you please upvote me?? i need 3000 tk for my tution fees( worth 32$). if you give me a simple upvote ,it would be a great contribution for. we are from poor country and poor family.
Thank you

Thanks for posting this. Can i ask you something though? What do you see as great content? I have had a bit of a hard time figuring out what makes a successful post, with a few of my post getting a nice amount of upvotes, while the majority is seen by noone.
So how would you, as a more experienced user, describe good content? I really want to grow, and discuss my ideas with people. Moreover, i would like to grow to the point where i can upvote someone new, and help them by adding value to their post. Right now my upvote is only worth 7 cents, but i expect that to change as i invest more in the platform. But as i am a student, i can really only afford to invest whatever i make off of this platform.
Any help/ advice would be appreciated man, hope you had a great new years eve :)

It depends so much about what the crowd like to read, i can't judge what is a good contents in general i only know what i like to read. I advice you do do and post what inspire you, follow your heart :)

Thanks for the answer :) I am definetely doing that already. I'm currently doing my Bachelor where i grow fake leather using bacteria, which i have been writing about. That i have found extremely interesting. Besides that, i am writing about stuff like 3d printing and laser cutting, where i am working on making a physical steem coin. Will do more on this next week.
And i also want to do a cooking series :D Thanks for all the advice dude, please keep making this platform great :)

You said it all... I think people like you help this platform grow. Why? Well, because as you said, you welcome new users to the platform, you upvote quality content and you are having a big influence on Steemit. Definitely one of my favorite posts since I have been on Steemit.

For me it seems stupid to upvote my own comment. Maybe it's because my vote is 0.01$
Do I get greedier when getting more?

Beautiful wrietup.

My answer to your question: It does not look wrong to upvote personal comments. But there should be a limit. I read an introduction post by a new Steemian the other day, in it a whale visited. The "whale" upvoted the post with about 20 cents, then upvoted his comment on the post with $5. It looks really discouraging.

You mentioned different categories of steemians. From Authors to Spectators. Some of these spectators want to be rewarded too. It would be better if they post contents and upvote themselves, than commenting a word and giving it huge upvotes. It makes the rewards pool look unfair. Nice suggestion by the way.

Thank you for this explanation even though everyone will still decide for them what they wish to do because this is an investment and everyone is protecting his. The authors want to be fully rewarded, the investors need motivation and both people are needed to keep the ecosystem going. Thank God we don't all think the same way. Sure, people who believes in the value of steem will take the risk and invest in it more unlike people who need quick cash like you rightly pointed out. The more we power up, the more the value of steem increases as against the SBD. And this statement of yours got me:

"One special word for authors that post great contents and doesn't get the rewards they deserve, don't loose faith, be patient, stay active and develop connection with other steemians, it take time to be valued as you should simply because there is so many new post and authors per day."

Patience and faith in myself it is! Thank you for this. Means a lot. Really an eye opener.
"Ese" (Thank you in my local dialect (Yoruba language) here in Nigeria.

Thanks . I always feel smarter after reading your posts. Please keep sharing your thoughts. interesting post

Yes I can upvote. :) And upvoted..

Answer is simple...NO. Does that even need explanation?! It's ok if you like your own post, it's like giving youself a cookie for the effort, but comments is pure BS!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

i agree on it and i think here is really the persons in classes and every one have his own mind which u separate in specially 3 calsses and also thats ur good decesions u invest ur earned in steem hope we will try to understand it and will follow u also the upvoting ourselves always 100% will make the steemit and unattractive paltfarm and no one will keep intrest in steemit

HAPPY NEW YEAR

In your Author mindset section you say that there are some authors who want to make a quick profit and post shitty things. You also say that this doesn't really matter.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to believe that but I still find the main trending page to be full of junk. Much more than good content.
I specially despise these guys just posting and reposting the frickin' price of whatever coin. Literally, just saying the price.
It's hard to find real value and most time, when I find it, it is undervalued.

Then again, maybe that's just people.
People like junk.
And people who can make good posts turn to make junk because it pays.
Bittersweet experience with Steemit here...

I agree it is really hard to detect good contents i am not sure what kind of features could be added to steemit to help us customize our researd with active filters.

I guess the way is to carefully choose who you follow. And then see if you can use their criteria and reesteems.
But it takes time to scrounge the new articles and find authors worth a read.

really lord.
I've signed in to all apps, but I still do not get upvote.
I'm getting confused now sir.
I see other people making regular posts only, but get upvotr hundreds.
while I do not.
i want to ask mister @damarth ,,
what is a good application in steemit?

I hope Mr @damarth replied to my comment.
give me direction so i understand.
thanks a lot @damarth masters

It's a built-in feature on the platform, so it's up to us to use it as we please. I rarely upvote my comments, but sometimes I do it in order to move my comment up in the comments thread.
Upvoting on yourself​ is not harmful as long as it's done with caution. If we don't abuse the features we can all benefit​.

Thank you for sharing this. I'm a new steemian and there's a lot to learn! I didn't know the pros and cons of voting for my owns posts and did not know if it was acceptable in the steemit culture. I'll read this again when I'm not so tired and learn more. Say hello to a newbie if you'd like: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@mininthecity/introduceyourself

Realistic analysis and motivational too !
Great effort my friend !!

Hey @damarth alot of great point are discussed in your blog which will be quite helpful for me as i am a newbie in the steemit. Looking forward for more blogs from you. Great content

I don't selfvote, as I believe the content we share will gain enough love through its audience, I don't have a problem with it, I just don't do it.

Your idea of capping it is an interesting one, would it be enforceable? Or could it be circumvented?

@damarth actually i learned the process of how steem works to be honest i was unabale to understand the upvotes to self and this was something out of the box for me explained well.i like this point specially
"This is the reason why at the moment i upvote a bit more often my comments and i upvote authors a bit less ".

I learn allot from your post today, I'm new here and this post gave me insight of the kind of people on steemit and I fully support self voting.

Hey bro,don't mind.pls give me a upvote...your upvote is very powerful.I need to your a upvote.i grow up my steemit account.pls hep me...bro??

very good post bro...

Thanks @damarth for this.

You just have tutored me.

Thanks for this post... Excellent information and very good explainning

Great steemit

Fully agreed mate. Keep it up keep very informative post. Thanks

U5dsCxAqNwN8ASZ96yoRXMpGCBGtRhX.gif

I agree 100% that ......If investors prevent voting for authors, adoption will fall, price of the community will decrease to oblivion and on the quit investors will unfastened everything!
vote casting satisfactory contents is imperial to steemit's fulfillment. Steemit is an funding of wealth and highbrow asset. permit's create wealth nowadays for a higher tomorrow.

I'm new on steemit need yours help ..can anyone help me? (for motivated plz)