The new 5 vote system - why it's good for "minnows"

in steemit •  8 years ago  (edited)

So Ive seen a few articles about the new 5 vote limit, but I don't think any of them sum up things great.

Here's a link against the 5 vote limit, which I initially agreed with, but I've changed my mind:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@contentjunkie/5-votes-is-not-enough

5 votes is great - for minnows

In the old system the "target" number of votes was 40, with serious decrease in power after about 20 votes. This meant if you were a minnow your votes were worth 1/20th to 1/40th or less of your power. It took your already small voting power and made it much, much weaker.

UPDATE: How voting works

By default you have 100% power. Each time you vote, you spend some of that power. In the old system the most you could burn per vote was about 1%. Each day, you regain 20% power. Thus, you could vote 20 times a day without any issue. If you voted more, then you would take more days to have your votes have "full strength" and thus full reward.

My understanding is that in the new system a vote is at max 4% of your total power. This means you can vote 5 times a day without reducing your power beyond what can regenerate in a day. You can still vote more, but each vote will be worth less and less and it will take more days to regain full strength.

Before: You could vote all you liked, but it was worthless.

It sucks being on the other end of that - having articles appreciated by a ton of minnows and getting... 5 cents or even just a penny. The result of each minnow vote being so small -.5 to 1% of their voting power - was that the votes were almost meaningless.

But with the change those same votes might be worth 20cents or 40 cents. Yeah, still pennies but suddenly those pennies can add up.

Power users actually unaffected

With the new power slider that just got rolled out, a power user can up the number of votes by just dropping their power. This means they can reward LOTS of posts a few dollars rather than 10-20 for hundreds. As a recipient of a few $100-200 votes I'll miss them, but at the same time I expect things to be a LOT more consistent and feel a lot more FAIR.

Suddenly all votes can matter.

If you are a minnow, you can actually reward someone. And if you have a lot of steem, you can now reward someone proportionally. This means that @dantheman and @ned don't have to hand out $200 votes or nothing. The whales, dolphins, and other large aquatic creatures can distribute their votes much farther.

All of this is great

There have been lots of complaints about the power of whales and the weaknesses of minnows. This change actually along with the power slider address BOTH issues.

The whales are listening, steemit is listening, and I have renewed faith in the platform. So should you.

Thank you steemit team, for listening :)

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I was definitely struck by Dan saying that most people's voting power was wasted as they simply didn't use it. They just gave about 5 votes anyway, which were 1/40th of their power each, and the rest wasn't used.

I wonder if this platform might have been different if people actually voted the way they should have.

People are hard to change. You have to adapt your platform to people or make it obvious enough that people adapt to the platform. I'm glad to see Dan is figuring it out.

I agree with your point of view and the power slider is a ame changer.

I agree. I didn't like it at first but now like it. It just was marketed incorrectly 5 votes good but marketed incorrectly

I think it should have been marketed as minnows you now have opportunity for a super vote!

At last, a sensible summary! I like the new system :)

Thanks for this detailed info I missed out on being offline for a little bit

This minnow doesn't have a power slider. Seems only the big fish get them.

Correct. If you vote is worth so little there is really no point. I think the slider comes in at around $300 in steempower.

310sp is the required minimum to have the slider

Interestingly, I have very little SP, however the slider is available in the settings of the eSteem app on iOS, so it seems to be universal there.

The capability is built into the platform. It's just weather the UI exposes it. Even people with low SP technically CAN vote with a smaller % if they used the steem API directly.

nice post! thx for helping me understand the new updates better~~

It will be interesting to see this actually play out the way you described.

At last an explanation in plain English! Thanks for this man, I was getting tied up in knots! Makes it clear now.

Yes hopefully the whales will like and upvote more content thus spreading the wealth to benefit more steemians.

Yeah i was sceptic first, but after i heard your vote weights 8x more... and you can adjust it with the slider.... i guess it will be very positive.

Please explain more about this 5 votes per day.Thanks!

Basically it affects how much your voting power drops. You have 100 voting power. Each time you vote, it goes down. The more it goes down the more your vote is worth.

It regenerates 20 points a day. It used to be each vote was like ~1% power. Now it will be 4% so each day you can make 5 votes, reducing power to about 80% . Then it regenerates. This is where the 5 votes thing comes from. You can vote more but they will be lesspowerful and take longer to regenerate.

Thank you I think I get it now

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