I recently had a long discussion in the chat. I won't reveal any names and that's not the point here. This person is fairly known, due to his contributions.. And the thing is..
We both agreed on specific things regarding steemit..
First of all .. There's been endless complaining during the past few days..
Complaining about steemit being a lottery. More complaints about payouts.. Even more complaints about steemit making the rich people richer.. And so on.. And so on.. And so on..
"Rags to riches" stories aren't so common..
Not as common as one would have hoped!
Let me describe this and tell you why..
In a previous post of mine, I used @gavvet as an example. You can read about it here. This Will Most Likely End Up In Another Post With 20+ Readers .. But it Shouldn't!
The thing is. I never meant gavvet any harm. It's not his fault that whales upvotes his content. He's a good author and he contributes a lot to the community. He deserves all the credits!
The REAL issue here however, are in fact the whales. I know I know, whales?! "They are the only ones who can actually make one person go from rags to riches, what are you talking about?!"
Seriously though.. Think about it..
People with that much power.. Will always have the most power. No matter what you do.
Sure, I could buy steem power and make a change in the whole community myself, but I can't afford it. I don't have that much money to invest.
Anyhow..
Once I made my post about gavvet, I obviously raised some questions.. Not only to myself, but too others as well..
That's also the reason for my discussion in the chat to begin with. I was confronted. I had to answer questions..
And I did that. Because that's who I am. I stand for my thoughts and for my beliefs. I'm raised that way.
Another thing is.. That I don't have to defend myself. I choose to do it.
No matter if you're a minnow, a whale or if you're just some seaweed.. I don't have a problem talking to you.
I won't discuss my own earnings or talk about me being satisfied or not. Instead, I'll talk about steemit & the real issues. Most of the whales are upvoting content from just a handful of authors. And that's what I showed you in my previous post. The post where I used gavvet as an example. Here's some other examples of the same thing..
And BEFORE anyone starts discussing things about this specific author..
I don't know him and I don't state this to point any fingers towards him. This is used in the same way as I used the screenshots in my previous post about gavvet. This is used as an example. Nothing more than that.
And here's what I want to bring to the surface..
You can cleary see what's going on here..
Upvotes from the same whales..
It's nothing wrong with that!! - Or is it..?
Do you really think that someone can get ~$1000 in 25 minutes.. Meanwhile other people are getting a few cents or a couple of dollars at the best..? - Sure! Everything is possible!
But.. Do you think that could happen... Four times in a row..? - What's the odds of that?!
- These whales doesn't even read the content. They upvote it because they know the author provides quality content. Most of these whales are doing that .. due to one simple reason.. Money.
On the other hand.. We have whales like @berniesanders and @dantheman, which I also talked about in my previous post. These two are digging around steemit. They are trying to find these "gems" among all the spam and crappy content being posted each minute..
I know there might be a few other whales doing the same thing.. But I actually don't find it necessary to bring you even further evidence about this. It's easy to spot.
Just use https://steemd.com/@username and you'll see what the whales are upvoting.. or downvoting. http://catchawhale.com will give you a list of the whales too..
Spend a couple of minutes there, check the whale activity and you'll see what I mean.
Furthermore ..
I'm doing whatever I can to bring more people to steemit.. I've talked about some of it in this post: Steemit: I will tell 500,000 people about you!! - And This WILL Make Us Go BIG!
But.. Seriously speaking.. This is not what we need. Not at this point.
What we should have done.. Is to build a more stable foundation to begin with..
We should have made it possible for more people to establish themselves. We should have allowed people to become whales and dolphins..
With hundreds of new people signing up each day.. MOST of the content disappears among all the spam and new posts.. It's hard to find good content.. Both for me, and for the people with enough steem power to make anything good out of it. -Both @berniesanders and @dantheman seems to be aware of this.. Which would be the reason they do whatever they can to upvote new users instead of the same already established authors that most of the others whales are doing.. They see this as a problem. I bet they are..
And it sure is a problem..
Disable whales to upvote the same author more than once per 24 hours. That is one solution to this problem.
That will force everyone to actually spend time on steemit.. And to find good content by reading it. They need to be picky about the content they upvote, instead of just upvoting the same established authors multiple times.. If they don't do that.. They won't be able to earn what they earn today..
The only downside I can see with something like this.. Is the money some of the established users might lose.. And that's bad.. And I would feel for them.. But seriously though.. Wouldn't it be worth it?
Wouldn't it be better to upvote their BEST content .. And to let them earn money on that, and allow OTHER authors a more fair chance of getting upvoted by the whales and dolphins too?
Best Regards,
hitmeasap
There's a lot of good content that doesn't get upvoted. Reasons for that include that the poster is relatively unknown (and perhaps, not yet 'trusted' by the community). Or it may be in a category (tag) that few people check regularly or are interested in. Sadly, there are some deserving posts that just fall through the cracks, since the platform has added users so quickly.
Whales still allocate much of the money on votes, but in the time that I've been on Steemit, things have really broadened. A lot of people have enough SP now to make a difference in a post's voting rewards. But until that process continues for a while longer until there is more equity in distribution, yes, you are going to see a small group of whales continue to try hard to reach all the deserving posts, while not getting all of them. And there is no conspiracy here; they are free to allocate their votes as they wish. Some days, this may mean that a lot of good newbie posts are getting their upvotes, while on other days it is the most popular posters who seem to get most of the rewards again, partly since the whales know that these posters have committed to the platform, are consistently producing high quality content that will add to Steemit's value, and deserve an income for their part in that. Other whales are simply trying to spot the most popular posts, like many others do, because they want to make more money.
So I appreciate the contribution you have made to this discussion with your post, and I would have upvoted it gladly, but I find the title to be misleading in that a number of other whales (besides the Bernie Sanders account) are trying hard to reach deserving posters and make this a better place. Not all whales are doing this, but some certainly are.
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Thank you for your comment @donkeypong, I appreciate it. No matter the upvote or not :)
I do understand that the title might feel misleading, but it did what I hoped for (and it's still at least half true in my opinion). At least when it comes to you. It did reach some of the people I was looking for and you are one of them. I also understand that there's a bunch of whales, dolphins and minnows who are digging around steemit regularly to find quality content from new contributors instead of upvoting content from the same authors multiple times per day.. But, I didn't know what to write in the title so I could catch the eyeballs I was hoping for. Anyhow, both @berniesanders and @dantheman are two of the people I know are doing the things I've talked about in this post.. They are trying to find some of these "gems" out there and I've also stated that I know there's other whales doing the same things.
With that being said, sorry for not using a better title but thank you for your awesome reply in this post. It means a lot to me and hopefully others will see the value too.
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"poster is relatively unknown (and perhaps, not yet 'trusted' by the community"
A poster shouldn't have to be known to get upvoted. Good content is good content. If a whale sees good content they should give it a vote.
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I agree with you. But that's also one of the problems.. Some of the whales aren't looking for new content or new authors.. They upvote the people who's already established and well-known.. Some whales are doing the digging but as it seems to be right now.. That isn't enough.
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**There's a lot of good content that doesn't get upvoted. Reasons for that include that the poster is relatively unknown (and perhaps, not yet 'trusted' by the community). **
Yes. but.....
This post is in the top
https://steemit.com/steemit/@konti/steemit-art-steemit-wallpapers
And Part.2 - far better but 8 upvote only
https://steemit.com/steemit/@konti/steemit-art-steemit-wallpapers-creative-design-part-2
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I'm not sure why that's the case. It may be that people were intrigued by the first post, which was really something new, and they wanted to reward you. Some may have even looked back and decided that your payout was enough already and wanted to save their upvotes for someone else (?) I'm just guessing. Also, 2-part (or multi-part) posts have a very sketchy track record on Steemit from what I have observed. With some exceptions, the later parts don't generally do as well. I'd suggest using a totally separate title the second time unless it is necessary to point out the continuation. And in the end, you just have to keep trying new and different things, because regardless of what I say, the truth is that we're all still learning what works and what doesn't. :)
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I look at the Whales differently, in my own business I take my clients out frequently. The larger the client the more money I am willing to spend on event tickets or meals and entertainment. It makes sense if you think about it because without these top clients my business would not be what it is today. That being said I also take out my smaller accounts but maybe only once every couple of years just to say thank you for supporting us. And guess what its my top accounts that give us the luxury of being able to wine and dine the smaller accounts...hmmmm, that's interesting but it's true. It would be nice to treat everyone equally but at the end of the day the money in my business account is coming from a handful of top clients. I don't know if that's what's going on, maybe it is, and if that's what it is, whales supporting individuals that are investing a little bit or a lot of cash into their business, yes this is a business, than I do not see any harm in it. Lets remember if you have not invested cash but have invested time and hours writing that's wonderful and the community could not survive without your support, but right now at the start, a new business needs cash and lots of it to survive the first couple of years. At the end of the day I am hopeful that more contributors will be recognized for their contributions and that the platform will continue to grow and become a great medium for talented writers, which bye the way I am not..lol
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You are right about @berniesanders, while he may not be the real Senator Sanders, he is certainly voting for those less fortunate. Culling through the crap to vote up the missed cream. That seems true to the desires of the real man as well as being fair here on steemit.
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There's a few people like berniesanders. Dantheman is one of them. Steemit needs more of these people!
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Part of the problem is down to how voting power drains in a 24 hour period. It isn't worth voting more than 20 times in a 24 hr period - so some whales just have a list of 20 authors they vote for all the time. And nobody else gets a look in from them.
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Well, if they would limit the amount of times one could vote for the same author, then it would still give other people a higher chance of getting exposure.. Sure, the whales could have 20 people on their list, but that doesn't seems to be how things are right now at least..
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Hello hitmeasap,
they whales can do what they want. They are free to choose what they want. I don't defend what they do not I blame them. But one thing must be said: when whales upvote new user or user who have only few Steem Power they are supporting Steemit even more. When these new users finally have more Steem power the Steemit benefits because they will upvote others with theire new voting power. By doing so we create more value or am I wrong? Today @dantheman upvoted a comment from me. It was like Christmas and having birthday the same time! Thanks for that btw. Going to power up so I can give in return.
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@timsaid, you are totally right, and that's what this whole posts is about.. To make people aware of the things that happens right now and to, hopefully, reach out to some of the whales, so they can perhaps change their minds a bit at least..
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P.S I think you may be on to something with voting for a contributor only once every 24 hrs. If we are looking for quality content I think it takes time to pull together a good article, review etc, so once a day per contributor seems very fair, that's a great idea! Edit, I guess the only downfall would be if you have been away for a few days and want to catch up on your favorite writers, so that makes it tough to only vote once every 24hrs for the same curator.
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That is true.. And it would be an unfortunate circumstance.. but I still believe something like that would be a great solution, perhaps not exactly what I've suggested but something similar at least. That would bring more value to the whole community in the long run.
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Funny you just posted that. I did not know how big @berniesanders is, but he just upvoted my last post and thus bought some Bitcoiners beer. So cheers to @berniesanders!
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That's cool, I'm happy for you! :)
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This post could literally save BTC... Currently BTC is the only way I could convert steem etc to my local FIAT... and some how it slips..
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@poseidon/how-i-would-increase-the-bitcoin-blocksize-limit
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Thanks.
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Thanks for this and other posts, hitmeasap. I enjoy reading them.
One of the reason the big fish might come to upvoting the same author multiple times (and perhaps not a single other post) is that they might just look at steemstats instead of steemit to see if there is anything new from the people on their follow list (I frequently do this myself). If they just watch steemit by watching steemstats they may not ever even see other posts (and expand their follow list).
Another problem might be that the good authors (or at least the ones that make posts that get high payouts) have little direct incentive to plough to the barrage of new articles that get posted everyday, they don't need the curation awards per se because they get paid for their own content anyway. This prevents wealth from trickling down. Perhaps it would be a good idea for those authors to upvote any and all constructive comments on their posts such that the wealth will trickle down anyway.
Just some thoughts.
Thanks,
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That's a great idea, I would have assumed that they would upvote insightful comments
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I agree with @moviefan, that's a great idea indeed. Thank you for sharing. :)
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I agree that most of the people holding large amounts of SP just vote on recommendation. Bernie and Dan are exceptions as I see them curating daily and actually reading posts and even commenting on them.
I said it before: With large SP in the wallet comes great responsibility".
Some of them don't hold truly to that responsibility and in the end it will be to their own loss if Steemit fails.
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I totally agree with you. Something has to be done! Hopefully this post will get enough exposure.
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robin hood, whale, dolphin, bluefin, yellowfin, minow, catfish, small fry. I only heard those name recently. But i agree with u mate, someone need to speak louder. This not just for us, this is for a better steemit.
"black and blue. god versus man, day versus night. the whales are coming" -Lex luthor
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The sad part is.. That it's so damn hard to get the necessary attention to bring things to the surface. I do what I can, and just hope that some people will see the things I do as a true contribution and something of value.
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@hitmeasap What does it take to create a new tag? of a post. And for it to be search-able on steemit.com right now the tags are very limited.Any ideas?
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I think you only need to add a #tag in the categories when you create your post.
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This post has a Fresh-Koolaid grade level of the 99% and trying to please the 1.0%. This puts the golfing level on a par 3 with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny.
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Well.. thank you.
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Wel.. thank thank you
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Haha, you're welcome :D
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You have a point there BUT some whales are probably just investors and don't have time/energy/will to read posts.
It does not matter you disable to whales to vote same author more than once in 24 hours. They still can choose whatever post from the trending page.
One solution to came my mind. Don't know if it's a good one or not but if there would be system that whales can't upvote posts which already have $500 value. I don't know about exact number but with this system I think more author's would get the value they deserve. :)
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This post has to do with the pic of cartoon whale and not anything else. The scenes of portraying dollar bills like that and throwing them in the air is highly disrespectful/sinful/blasphemous. The phrase "In God We Trust" is printed on US dollar bills along with possible significant names that deserve respect because of its origins and/or meaning. I know it's just a cartoon pic but such actions should not be done or depicted in any form. Sadly, it has become common among people nowadays but that doesn't make it right.
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Upvote for the whale picture alone.
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