Killing Curation - Why your Self Goats destroy my desire to upvote your article.
There are continuous talks about self-voting, rewards pool, visibility, ROI and the best practices around the Steem and Steemit communities. If you have been around for a bit maybe you have heard of this. But more likely you have seen the robot comments on posts declaring that a bot has voted at some or another percentage.
Something like this:
I wanna be visible!
So there are two reasons that I hear for doing this. One is visibility and the other is ROI. Let's tackle visibility first.
I have tried a lot of bot votes, I have never noticed a visibility bonus. When I go to the trending page, I see the same authors and the posts are always over 100 dollars or more, and so my paid upvotes have never seemed to help me with visibility. In fact, as we will discuss, they actually may have been preventing more real upvotes.
Killing Curation
So when I earned some whaleshares, I used them on a recent post to make it more visible! I put a $7.50 upvote right on a new post so that people would see it! (and perhaps be tricked into thinking people liked it?)
Well only of few of my most loyal followers ended up voting for it, here was the final result:
So no net effect, not a single additional view, but guess what? My loyal followers got a vastly reduced curation payout because I invited Official Fuzzy of whaleshares to take all of the curation rewards for my post!
Does this seem fair to them? I don’t think so. It would be much better for my followers had I applied the whaleshares last, not first. Then they would participate in the enhanced curation! This is the same for upgoats, randowhales, minnowboosters etc, unless you want these robots to get the curation rewards instead of your real followers, apply them in the final days before payout.
ROI? What is it that we are building here?
It is very possible that you have heard the phrase ROI, which stand for Return on Investment. I can understand that people want to make money, I can even understand that the incentives are set up a certain way for ROI analysis. But let’s do our ROI analysis after community building.
Why do I say that? Shouldn’t the free market be allowed to run….free? Actually yes, what I am fighting here is what is called myopic behavior or short-sightedness in plain english.
Building community is what we need to do in order to continue to see returns on our investments over the long haul. What is good for the short-term is not, in this case, healthy for the long term.
The incentives are clear - but please - add your ROI robot votes at the end.
Curie and curation efforts
If you are actually trying to get your content showcased by some of the great and wonderful curation services out there, you have heard of @curie. Know that @curie will not even consider your post if it already has over $1 in payout. Your best bet is patience, not my personal strong suit but something I have had to learn here on steemit.
Now, please leave your carefully constructed comments and criticisms below ;p
Love and Light!
Finally, someone who knows how to connect the dots. Smart.
Thanks Old Timer!
I've always been a strong proponent of using bots as a gift to show appreciation where your own up vote lacks. In my eyes it would be preferable if self up voting were limited, yet as ROI I can't blame people that make great content that continually doesn't get the recognition it deserves. As for @RandoWhale, by the time you see he's awake and get to your wallet, he's asleep again 🐳😴
Isnt that the truth! I use @treeplanter to show my appreciation, and will mention her more when I get around to an article about self voting. She recently stopped acceting self-votes!
I win whaleshares in a few contests, just put them on the oldest eligible post ;p
Thanks for chiming in!
I agree ,,, self goats perhaps project a kind of desperation. But each to his own. There is another problem that you should address . Many of the big guns here do not really participate by upvoting content. They just upload posts. Under the given scenario, how long will followers keep upvoting non-active profiles. I guess you are right. Patience is the name of the game ! :)
There are a few hot topics on my list - could you explain a little more what you mean? Are you refering to unactive accounts or people only upvoting their own posts? Or are they not using their voting power?
Thanks for the comment!
I am new here. And not very tech-savvy. So forgive me if I make any error. I mean, there are profiles with high steem power and influence. These profiles attract newcomers . However these profiles only upvote themselves or perhaps their friends. It is as if niche and groups have been created on steemit and they keep scratching each other's backs. Content has somehow taken a back seat. I am referring to accounts or people only upvoting their own posts. And not using their power or influence to welcome newcomers or promote content.
Thank you for reading, @ecoinstant . And forgive errors if any . You know the platform well. you know what the problem is :)
Yes this is very true, thank you for further explaining I have noticed this as well, and for this reason I don't think that size of your account is a good indicator of correct behavior. What they do can be very profitable - for them. As I learn, I mostly write for me and my followers, most of whom are smaller and newer than me. I want to let them know what I have learned.
When I started I did many things because I thought it was the way to do it. I keep experimenting, reading, writing and learning ;)
Comments like yours keep me motivated ;p
Yes, you speak correctly and accurately. We are all learning. Posts like yours, make me feel that I am not isolated in my thought 😊... Thank you. Great to know you 😊
A pleasure Nehab 😉
:) :)
They also have stealth settings, and would never have the patience to check every post if they paid for a vote minus that logo.
Then I have seen people paying directly to whales for votes, sometimes one month in advance, which would be tough to trace.
You have a point, but I would vote for the contents and overlook everything else.
Thank you for your comment! To get to the point, I will be blunt - did you upvote this post at 8% because it was worth 8%, or because it already has a reasonably large payout?
See when I am curating, I adjust my percentages based on my incentives - which are curation payouts. If I see that a good quality post has a very low payout, I hustle to put 100% on that baby. If it already has 5+ dollars, I still want to support them, so I will usually give between a 1-11% up vote. If its really incredible and I can't resist I throw on a 33%er.
These are just my thoughts - its psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, investing, all in one! This is what makes steem beautiful - plus the fact that we can talk about it ;p
Blessings to you!
I am learning and still doing the arithmetic. Let's see how it goes.
As far as I have assessed myself, I'm a bit of both, can be manipulative and kind under different circumstances.
Thank you! I love blunt people!! :)
I use steemnow and occasionally look at my curation rewards and realized I was paid the best for liking early small posts with small payouts. I was hardly rewarded at all for jumping on large payout posts.
There are always other considerations like support and interaction, but the arithmetic is there. A vote larger than mine before me drastically reduces my curation payout.
Excelente análisis. Lei en un post de banfield que los votos automáticos son mejor pagos. Otra situación es que la curaduría es sensiblemente baja cuando se hace antes de los 30 minutos.
Si, curaduría (no he sabido traducirlo!) Se maximiza a partir de 30 minutos, pero linealmente. A 29 minutos podrá recibir ~97% de la curaduría (de los 25%). A los 15 minutos reciben la mitad de los 25, y si son grandes, todavía quitan un buen parte.
Mr. Banfield tiene grandes análisis sobre el inversion, ha hecho buenas cosas tambien en promoción, no me parece que cultivar comunidades es su fuerte (aunque tenía una eserie que me encantó que era upvoteable).
Toda esta en conversación, así aunque soy 'nuevo' o 'pequeño' siento empodrado de opinar!
En el espiritu de franquesa, si logro darte mi voto antes de cervantes, gano muy bien, pero si cervantes me gana, 0.001 de pronto. El no es un bot pago, pero el ejemplo es claro. Si vamos a invitar mas bots, invitamos después.
Yes, completely agree with you.
That's true!
And it explains why 'introduce yourself' tag has so many visitors.
Indeed it may!
Cheers! :)
👍😀✌
that's the reason why I always wait a good 24 hours before sending a huge minnowbooster upvote to my posts :D
Thats the way to respect your followers!